THE JUDGEMENT
OF VALHALLA

“I’m sorry I done it, Major.”

We bandaged the livid face;

And led him out, ere the wan sun rose,

To die his death of disgrace.

The bolt-heads locked to the cartridge;

The rifles steadied to rest,

As cold stock nestled at colder cheek

And foresight lined on the breast.

“Fire!” called the Sergeant-Major.

The muzzles flamed as he spoke:

And the shameless soul of a nameless man

Went up in the cordite-smoke.

Up from the fret of the earth-world, through the Seven Circles of Flame,

With the seven holes in Its tunic for sign of the death-in-shame,

To the little gate of Valhalla the coward-spirit came.

Cold, It crouched in the man-strong wind that sweeps Valhalla’s floor;

Weak, It pawed and scratched on the wood; and howled, like a dog, at the Door

Which is shut to the souls who are sped in shame, for ever and evermore:

For It snuffed the Meat of the Banquet-boards where the Threefold Killers sit,

Where the Free Beer foams to the tankard-rim, and the Endless Smokes are lit....

And It saw the Nakéd Eye come out above the lintel-slit.

And now It quailed at Nakéd Eye which judges the naked dead;

And now It snarled at Nakéd Truth that broodeth overhead;

And now It looked to the earth below where the gun-flames flickered red.

[5]

It muttered words It had learned on earth, the words of a black-coat priest

Who had bade It pray to a pulpit god—but ever Eye’s Wrath increased;

And It knew that Its words were empty words, and It whined like a homeless beast:

Till, black above the lintel-slit, the Nakéd Eye went out;

Till, loud across the Killer-Feasts, It heard the Killer-Shout—

The three-fold song of them that slew, and died ... and had no doubt.

Below your black priest’s heaven,

Above his tinselled hell,

Beyond the Circles Seven,

The Red-Steel Killers dwell—

The men who drave, to blade-ring home, behind the marching shell.

We knew not good nor evil,

Save only right of blade;

Yet neither god nor devil

...