Given a soul filled with treason
To embitter and poison the end?
Is there a peaceful Nirvana?
Is there a rest for the soul?
A bed for the toil-driven Karma,
A telos? a Heaven? a goal?
What of the slain in the battle?
What of the dead on the field?
Foul slaughtered like horses and cattle,
Those men that we use as a shield:
If ever a soul got to Heaven!
If ever soul reaped a reward!
Those whose red blood has been given
A gift to their own native sward:
Those are the ones for a Heaven,
For a peace and a pleasure unknown,
By their work are they all self-forgiven,
Let their blood for His Blood atone.
The World's Reward
To N. S., 1st Coldstream Guards
UNDER what melancholy thought
Laboured we long!
Setting all joy at nought,
We joined the throng
Of striving wretches, battered by despair,
With bursting eye-balls, blood-bespattered hair.
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