Means life or death, maybe, or the living death
Of mangled limbs, blind eyes or darkened brain:
And the chairman, as his monocle falls again,
Pronounces each doom with easy, indifferent breath.

Then suddenly they all shudder as they see
A young man move before them wearily,
Pallid and gaunt as one already dead;
And they are strangely troubled as he stands
With arms outstretched and drooping, thorn-crowned head,
The nail-marks glowing in his feet and hands.


3

AIR-RAID.

Night shatters in mid-heaven: the bark of guns,
The roar of planes, the crash of bombs, and all
The unshackled skiey pandemonium stuns
The senses to indifference, when a fall
Of masonry near by startles awake,
Tingling wide-eyed, prick-eared, with bristling hair,
Each sense within the body crouched aware
Like some sore-hunted creature in the brake.

Yet side by side we lie in the little room,
Just touching hands, with eyes and ears that strain
Keenly, yet dream-bewildered, through tense gloom,
Listening in helpless stupor of insane