C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

The Veterans

From ‘The Old Guard’

THE THING is worth considering;

Three ghosts of old veterans

In the uniform of the Old Guard,

With two shadows of hussars!

Since the supreme battle

One has grown thin, the other stout;

The coat once made to fit them

Is either too loose or too tight.

Don’t laugh, comrade;

But rather bow low

To these Achilles of an Iliad

That Homer would not have invented.

Their faces with the swarthy skin

Speak of Egypt with the burning sun,

And the snows of Russia

Still powder their white hair.

If their joints are stiff, it is because on the battle-field

Flags were their only blankets:

And if their sleeves don’t fit,

It is because a cannon-ball took off their arm.