Explore "Dragon's Breath" by Hervey Allen on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
We held the last stone wall -- when day was red -- / They crept like morning shadows through the dead, / The _flammenwerfer_ with their dragon's breath / Compressed in nippled bottle-tanks of death.
They puffed along the wall and one long cry / Withered away into the morning sky, / And some made crablike gestures where they lay / And all our faces turned oil gray, / Before the smoke rolled by.
It is beyond belief / How men can live / All curled up like a leaf.
I saw a man bloom in a flower of flame, / Roaring with fire, / Three times he called a name; / Three times he whirled within a white-hot pod / With busy hands and cried, "Oh, God! Oh, God!"
Now when the crumpets lie with blusterous joy / And the silk, wind-tweaked colors virgin fresh, / Borne by the blithe, boy bodies glitter past, / As the old gladiators throw their mesh; / The dragon's breath leaps from the bugle blast / And Azrael comes pounding with his drum -- / _Fe, fe,. fi, fo, fum -- _ / I smell the roasting flesh!