So many times throughout the last great war
I found myself, a message in my hands;
Bowed with the loss, yet somehow never weeping for
The many who were left on foreign strands.

But on the morning when the news was brought
That one among them had been wounded, lay
At death's door; Only then was I distraught
Enough to cry aloud my grieved dismay.

In sickened rage I saw a poet dead;
A broken body, silent spirit, and no pen
In his stilled hand --a bayonet instead;
But yet he lived. He did come back again.

Came back to be a merchant. How or why
I do not know, and he does not rebel.
This is a better world in which to die
Than live, if one must live an infidel!

And it seems now to have been such a pity,
Living through Normandy --to die in Tallahassee.
This end of poets and their art could I foresee,
Those tears would not have been for him, but me!