I 
GLOOM! 
An October like November; 
August a hundred thousand hours, 
And all September, 
A hundred thousand, dragging sunlit days, 
And half October like a thousand years . . . 
And doom! 
That then was Antwerp. . . 
                              In the name of God, 
How could they do it? 
Those souls that usually dived 
Into the dirty caverns of mines; 
Who usually hived 
In whitened hovels; under ragged poplars; 
Who dragged muddy shovels, over the grassy mud, 
Lumbering to work over the greasy sods. . . 
Those men there, with the appearance of clods 
Were the bravest men that a usually listless priest of God 
Ever shrived. . . 
And it is not for us to make them an anthem. 
If we found words there would come no wind that would fan them 
To a tune that the trumpets might blow it, 
Shrill through the heaven that's ours or yet Allah's, 
Or the wide halls of any Valhallas. 
We can make no such anthem. So that all that is ours 
For inditing in sonnets, pantoums, elegiacs, or lays 
Is this: 
In the name of God, how could they do it? 


II 
For there is no new thing under the sun, 
Only this uncomely man with a smoking gun 
In the gloom. . . 
What the devil will he gain by it? 
Digging a hole in the mud and standing all day in the rain by it 
Wa