The Soldier's Girl

In my breast pouch a picture lies My smiling girl with cornflower eyes And in my head I hear sweet sighs Drop from her lips of cherry But in the moonlight, stark and chill When corpses hung on barbed wire thrill As shrapnel makes its second kill Dark thoughts swarm round to harry I think of cripples, widowed men Farmers and shepherds of the glen Miners and weavers..What of them At home, free to make merry? She’s meek...the easier to rule She’s trusting..Easier to fool And pure...how might the lecher drool And make of her his quarry? The horrors of the battlefield I meet, because I dare not yield But worse, the foes at home, concealed And her alone, unwary.