Explore "Soldier-Poet" by Hervey Allen on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
To Francis Fowler Hogan.
I think at first like us he did not see / The goal to which the screaming eagles flew; / For romance lured him, France, and chivalry; / But Oh! Before the end he knew, he knew!
And gave his first full love to Liberty, / And met her face to face one lurid night / While the guns boomed their shuddering minstrelsy / And all the Argonne glowed with demon light.
And Liberty herself came through the wood, / And with her dear, boy lover kept the tryst; / Clasped in her grand, Greek arms he understood / Whose were the fatal lips that he had kissed -- / Lips that the soul of Youth has loved from old -- / Hot lips of Liberty that kiss men cold.