The Sniper

Two hundred yards away he saw his head;
He raised his rifle, took quick aim and shot him.
Two hundred yards away the man dropped dead;
With bright exulting eye he turned and said,
‘By Jove, I got him!’
And he was jubilant; had he not won
The meed of praise his comrades haste to pay?
He smiled; he could not see what he had done;
The dead man lay two hundred yards away.
He could not see the dead, reproachful eyes,
The youthful face which Death had not defiled
But had transfigured when he claimed his prize.
Had he seen this perhaps he had not smiled.
He could not see the woman as she wept
To hear the news two hundred miles away,
Or through his every dream she would have crept,
And into all his thoughts by night and day.
Two hundred yards away, and, bending o’er
A body in a trench, rough men proclaim
Sadly, that Fritz, the merry, is no more.
(Or shall we call him Jack? It’s all the same.)