Poetic Injustice
Item
Title
Poetic Injustice
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Description
A Scottish fighting man whose wife
Turned false and tempted his best friend,
Finding no future need for life
Resolved he'd win a famous end.
Bayonet and bomb this wild man took,
And Death in every shell-hole sought,
Yet there Death only made him hook
To dangle bait that others caught.
A hundred German wives soon owed
Their widows' weeds to this one man
Who also guided down Death's road
Scores of the Scots of his own clan.
Seventeen wounds he got in all
And jingling medals four or five.
Often in trenches at night-fall
He was the one man left alive.
But fickle wife and paramour
Were strangely visited from above,
Were lightning-struck at their own door
About the third week of their love.
'Well, well' you say, man wife and friend
Ended as quits' but I say not:
While that false pair met a clean end
Without remorse, how fares the Scot?
Turned false and tempted his best friend,
Finding no future need for life
Resolved he'd win a famous end.
Bayonet and bomb this wild man took,
And Death in every shell-hole sought,
Yet there Death only made him hook
To dangle bait that others caught.
A hundred German wives soon owed
Their widows' weeds to this one man
Who also guided down Death's road
Scores of the Scots of his own clan.
Seventeen wounds he got in all
And jingling medals four or five.
Often in trenches at night-fall
He was the one man left alive.
But fickle wife and paramour
Were strangely visited from above,
Were lightning-struck at their own door
About the third week of their love.
'Well, well' you say, man wife and friend
Ended as quits' but I say not:
While that false pair met a clean end
Without remorse, how fares the Scot?
Identifier
3425.txt
Creator
Graves, Robert (1895-1985)
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Date
(1995, 1997, 1999)
Date Created
1997-01-01
Temporal Coverage
1999-12-31
Type
Poem
Publisher
The First World War Poetry Digital Archive
