Explore "To an American Soldier Going into Action" by Edwina Stanton Babcock on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
France, August, 1918.
Today's your turn to take the road of fire; / Your turn to rally at the gates of hell; / Your turn for steel and gas and blood and mire, / In shell-holes and through mazes of barbed wire, / Where men before you fought and bled and fell.
And we go with you, we, who know your face -- / Its dear and merry shining, and intent; / Follow you blindly to this testing place. / Breathless, with you at this, the ultimate pace / Your fleet strong spirit takes for its ascent.
Whatever agony is yours is ours, / Whatever thing the soul of you endures; / We are the witness of your manhood's powers; / Not one of us who has your measure cowers -- / What we know of you all our thought insures.
Go you, then, to the Front! May God be good! / Whatever face you raise to Him will be / The face of one, who for our Hope has stood, / Manly and resolute, whose spirit would / Be at the Front, and elsewhere could not be!