BY THE WALLACHIAN TENTS
THE BOY
Over dripping washing-trough
Bends my mother busy drubbing,
Father’s fustanella rubbing
With the dark soap, smeary—rough.
There my goats go, wild careering
From the sound of wagons, nearing.
Oootz—Ella—Whooff—!
Out of there, you silly kid,
By the old soup-kettle hid.
THE MOTHER
That boy, lying in the thyme,
Sheepskinned loafer in the grasses,
He is carelessness sublime,
Sunned in yellow iris masses.
Thinks he of the dead men sleeping
Far away from flocks he’s keeping,
Piled in bloody mountain-passes?
With the brutal guns again
Booming: “Give us men! More men!”
THE BOY
Baby hanging from the tree,
Peeps from out his bright bag-hollows,
While the white dog rolls and wallows
Bitten by an angry bee.
Forth for those sheep he must sally,
Where they by the cold brook dally.
Oootz—Ella—Deee!—
Now the fools, in silly mass,
Scamper toward the mountain-pass.
THE MOTHER
Far off, on the dusty plain,
Reels my drunk Wallachian,
Coming up from town again.
Drinking in the village khan,
All our Balkan coin he’s spending;
As his stupid way he’s wending
I the future scan.
Ugh! I hear those guns again
Surly—growling: “Men! More men!”
THE BOY
Swift the smooth Peneios flows
Smoky-white to sea’s blue gleaming.
Where the battleships are steaming
Ready for their foes,
I should like to fight and bear me
Fiercely. Nothing there would scare me.
Ella—Ella—Pros!
With this high-swung shepherd-stick
That old bucking ram I’ll hit!
THE MOTHER
St. Spiridion! He beats
That old ram as ’t were his woman!
What a fine, big, brawny human
Have I suckled at these teats!
Ah! I have my mother-reasons
To distrust Rumanian treasons,
When our Council meets.
Bah! those dirty guns again
Booming: “Give us men! More men!”
When my man comes, o’er and o’er
I will bluster—Not will hunger
Nor your beatings make me monger
Sons to angry war.
That brown boy, in sunshine dreaming,
I’ll not feed him to the teeming
Snorting cannon-maw!
Move we now our tents again,
Far from guns that roar: “More men!”