Break of Day in the Trenches
21 lines✦
he darkness crumbles away.
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet's poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies.
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you have swallowed something else
A bitter taste, or something rank
But what is it?—a poppy's red?
The poppy's red is beautiful.
The poppy's red is beautiful.
But mine is the poppy of the trenches,
And I have no other flower to give.
Only the poppy, red with the blood of the dead,
And the poppy's red is beautiful.
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