Death's Men

Under a grey October sky
The little squads that drill
Click arms and legs mechanically,
Emptied of ragged will:

Of ragged will that frets the sky
From crags juts ragged Pines,
A wayward immortality,
That flies from Death's trim lines.

The men of Death stand trim and neat,
Their faces stiff as stone,
Click, clack, go four and twenty feet
From twelve machines of bone.

"Click, clack, left! right! form fours! incline!"
The jack-box sergeant cries;
For twelve erect and wooden dolls
One clockwork doll replies.

And twelve souls wander 'mid still clouds
In a land of snow-drooped trees,
Faint, foaming streams fall in grey hills
Like beards in old men's knees.

Old men, old hills, old kings, their beards
Cold stone-grey, still cascades
Hung high above this shuddering earth
Where the red blood sinks and fades.

Then the quietness of all ancient things,
Their round and full repose
As balm upon twelve wandering souls
Down from the grey sky flows.

The rooks from out the tall, gaunt trees
In shrieking circles pass;
Click, clack, click, clack go Death's trim men
Across the Autumn grass.