VALHALLA’S VERDICT
It heard the Song of the Gunner-Dead die out to a sullen roar:
But Nakéd Truth said never a word; and Eye peered down no more.
For Eye had seen; and Truth had judged ... and It might not pass the Door!
And now, like a dog in the dark, It shrank from the voice of a man It knew:—
“There are empty seats at the Banquet-board, but there’s never a seat for you;
For they will not drink with a coward soul, the stark red men who slew.
There’s meat and to spare, at the Killer-Feasts where Thor’s swung hammer twirls;
There’s beer and enough, in the Free Canteen where the Endless Smoke upcurls;
There are lips and lips, for the Killer-Men, in the Hall of the Dancing-Girls.
There’s a place for any that passes clean—but for you there’s never a place:
The Endless Smoke would blacken your lips, and the Girls would spit in your face;
And the Beer and the Meat go sour on your guts—for you died the death of disgrace.
We were pals on earth: but by God’s brave Son and the bomb that I reached too late,
I damn the day and I blast the hour when first I called you mate;
And I’d sell my soul for one of my feet, to hack you from the gate—
To hack you hence to the lukewarm hells that the priest-made ovens heat,
Or the faked-pearl heaven of pulpit gods, where the sheep-faced angels bleat
And the halo’s rim is as hard to the head as the gilded floor to the feet.”
It heard the stumps of Its one-time mate go waddling back to the Feast.
And, once and again, It whined for the Meat; ere It slunk, like a tongue-lashed beast,
To the tinselled heaven of pulpit gods and the tinselled hell of their priest.