Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/280

"The charge is old"? As old as Cain as fresh as yesterday;
Old as the Ten Commandments have ye talked those laws away?
If words are words, or death is death, or powder sends the ball,
You spoke the words that sped the shot the curse be on you all.

"Our friends believe"? Of course they do as sheltered women may;
But have they seen the shrieking soul ripped from the quivering clay?
They!—If their own frontdoor is shut, they'll swear the whole world's warm;
What do they know of dread of death or hanging fear of harm?

The secret half a county keeps, the whisper in the lane,
The shriek that tells the shot went home behind the broken pane,
The dry blood crisping in the sun that scares the honest bees,
And shows the boys have heard your talk what do they know of these ?

But you—you know—ay, ten times more; the secrets of the dead,
Black terror on the country-side by word and whisper bred,
The mangled stallion's scream at night, the tail-cropped heifer's low.
Who set the whisper going first? You know, and well you know!