Panama and Other Poems Narrative and Occasional By Stephen Phillips: With a Frontispiece by Joseph Pennell |
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THE HUSH |
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 | Panama and Other Poems Narrative and Occasional |  |
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THE HUSH
There is a hush before the thunder-jar,When white the steeples against purple stand;
There is a hush when night with every star
Pales on the summer like a dwindling brand.
Now a more awful hush appals the soul,
When concentrating armies crouch to spring;
Stillness more pregnant than the thunder-roll,
An European dawn with redder wing.
The Teuton horde no conscience onward drives,
Sullen they come; to slaughter shepherded;
Timed for the shambles with unwilling lives;
With doubt each soldier is already dead.
The massed battalions like a myth shall reel,
Vain but to fight if first they cannot feel.
August, 1914,
Before the Battle of Mons.
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