The great men framed the fierce decrees 
Embroiling State with State; 
They bit their thumbs across the seas 
In diplomatic hate; 
They lit the pyre whose glare and heat 
Make Hell itself seem cold; 
The flames bloomed red above the wheat, 
Their wild profusion wreathed the street- 
Then in the smoke and fiery sleet 
The common men took hold. 

Where Babel was with Bedlam freed, 
And wide the gates were flung; 
To chaos, while the anarch breed 
In all the world gave tongue, 
The common men in close array, 
By mountain, plain and sea, 
Went outward girded for the fray, 
On one dear quest, whate'er they pay 
In blood and pain?the open way 
To keep for Liberty. 

The common men who never tire, 
Unsightly in the mirk 
Of caking blood and smoke and mire, 
Push forward with their work; 
A while in foulest pits entombed, 
Resistless, still and slow, 
Burnt, broken, stifled, seeming doomed, 
Past where the flowers of Satan bloomed, 
Up gutted hills with shell-breath plumed, 
The stubborn armies go. 

Contending in the shattered sky 
In empyrean wars, 
The sons of simple men out-vie 
God's splendid meteors; 
Where'er the mills of Vulcan roared 
And blinked against the night, 
Swart shapes with sweat-washed eyes have 
stored 
The clean, lean lightnings of the Lord 
To be a league-long, leaping sword 
In this our holy fight. 

The small men know the burden well, 
The dreadful paths they know, 
With fear and death and torture dwell. 
And sup and sleep with, woe. 
They're riven in the shrapnel gust, 
But; blind and reeling, plan 
Another blow, a final thrust 
To subjugate the tyrant's lust. 
So, bleeding, blundering in the dust, 
Men fight and die for MAN.