TO ADOLF GUNTHER HAGEDORN

    Night!  And a black and barren sky
      With a wet wind in from the coast. 
    And only the kites to make reply
    To heaving body and pleading cry—­
    Here where the lost battalions lie,
      I walked last night with a ghost.

    His face was gray, his hands were red,
      And a ghostly mare he rode,
    That wearily stepped, with drooping head,
    Over the shadowy lines of dead,
    And rolled her eyes, and shook with dread
      Under her foam-white load.

    The ghost turned not to left or right. 
      But mutely he beckoned me,
    And moved like a pillar of livid light
    Through the humid dark of the foggy night,
    With eyes deep-sunken and greenly bright
      As phosphor on the sea.

    He led me where in ghostly files
      The dead slept with their toys. 
    Miles, miles, and never-ending miles,
    Along the valley’s mournful aisles,
    The voiceless, vague, misshapen piles
      Of men and golden boys!

    He led me up the gory hill
      By wood and sodden heath. 
    Ravage!  And faces, lone and chill,
    In the murmuring wash of the willow-rill! 
    Slaughter!  And voices, begging shrill
      The merciful grace of death.

    A waning moon broke, sickly pale,
      Through the muddy fog’s disguising;
    And over the breadth of the ghastly vale
    The battle-wake like a steamer’s trail,
    And a heaving as of waves in a gale,
      Rising and falling and rising!

    And out of the air, and up from the plain,
      The ancient battle-story!—­
    Of stricken love and laughter slain,
    And hearts beneath the hoofs of pain—­
    But not a breath of human gain,
      And not a word of glory.

MAKERS OF MADNESS

CHARACTERS

In the Capital of Iberia: 

  The king
  the Prime Minister
  the Minister of war
  the chief of staff
  A Secretary
  officers

In the Capital of the Republic: 
  Grosvenor, a contractor
  Conroy, a manufacturer of guns
  Pollen, owner of a chain of newspapers
  senator Taney
  senator Harradan
  representative Maynard
  A general in the army
  A Captain
  crowd
  page

In costuming this play, it is essential that the uniforms of the Iberian officers in the first scene should not be conspicuously copied after those of any of the armies of Europe.  A compromise, grotesque to the expert, would be better here than a misleading realism.