The bullets pelt like winter hail,
   The whistle and they sigh,
They shrill like cordage in a gale,
   Like mewing kittens cry;
They hiss and spit, they purring come;
   Or, silent all a span,
They rap, as on a slackened drum,
   The dab that kills a man.

Rage takes you next.  All hot your face
   The bitter void, and curses leap
From pincered teeth.  The wide, still space
   Whence all these leaden devil’s sweep
Is Tophet.  Fiends by day and night
   Are groping for your heart to sate
In blood their diabolic spite. 
You shoot in idiot delight,
   Each winging slug a hymn of hate.

The futile bullets scratch and go,
   They chortle and the coo. 
I laugh my scorn, for now I know
   The thing they cannot do. 
They flit like midges in the sun,
   But howso thick they be
What matter, since there is not one
   That God has marked for me!

An Eastern old philosophy
   Come home at length and passion stills-
The thing will be that is to be,
   And all must come as Heaven wills. 
Where in the swelter and the flame
   The new, hot, shining bullets drip;
One in the many has an aim,
Inwove a visage and a name-
   No man may give his fate the slip!

The bullets thrill along the breeze,
   They drum upon the bags,
They tweak your ear, your hair they tease,
   And peck your sleeve to rags. 
Their voices may no more annoy-
   I chortle at the call: 
The bullet that is mine, my boy,
   I shall not hear at all!

The war’s a flutter very like
   The tickets that we took from Tatt. 
Quite possibly I’ll make a strike;
   The odds are all opposed to that. 
Behind the dawn the Furies sway
   The mighty globe from which to get
Those bullets which throughout the day
Will winners be to break or slay. 
   I have not struck a starter yet

The busy bullets rise and flock;
   They whistle as they pass;
They’re chipping at the solid rock,
   They’re skipping in the grass. 
Out there the tiny dancers throw
   Their sober skirts of rust,
Brown flitting figures tipping toe
   Along the golden dust.

UNREDEEMED.

I saw the Christ down from His cross,
   A tragic man lean-limbed and tall,
But weighed with suffering and loss. 
   His back was to a broken wall,
And out upon the tameless world
   Was fixed His gaze His piercing eye
Beheld the towns to ruin hurled,
   And saw the storm of death pass by.

Two thousand years it was since first
   He offered to the race of men
His sovran boon, As one accurst
   They nailed Him to the jibbet then,
And while they mocked Him for their mirth
   He smiled, and from the hill of pain
To all the hating tribes of earth
   Held forth His wondrous gift again.