Poetry Archives

The great guns slay from a league away, the death-
    bolts fly unseen,
And bellowing hill replies to hill, machine to brute
    machine,
But still in the end when the long lines bend and
    the battle hangs in doubt
They take to the steel in the same old way that
    their fathers fought it out—
It is man to man and breast to breast and eye
    to bloodshot eye
And the reach and twist of the thrusting wrist, as
    it was in the days gone by!

Along the shaken hills the guns their drumming
    thunder roll—
But the keen blades thrill with the lust to kill
    that leaps from the slayer’s soul!

For hand and heart and living steel, one pulse of
    hate they feel.
Is your clan afraid of the naked blade?  Does it
    flinch from the bitter steel?
Perish your dreams of conquest then, your swollen
    hopes and bold,
For empire dwells with the stabbing blade, as it
    did in the days of old!