Here you will find the Poem Only Mules of poet Katharine Lee Bates
'The submarine was quite within its rights in sinking the cargo of the Armenian,?1,422 mules valued at $191,400.' No matter; we are only mules And slow to understand We drown according to the rules Of war, we contraband War reckons us as shot and shell, As so much metal lost. And mourns the dollars gone to swell The monstrous bill of cost. Would that we had been wrought of steel And not of quivering flesh! Of iron, not of nerves that feel, And maddened limbs that thresh The sucking seas in stubborn strife For that dim right of ours To what no factory fashions, life, No Edison endowers. Our last wild screams are choked; you know It does not matter, for We're only mules that suffered so, And contraband of war.
