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| THE TRAFFIC clears, and the crowd to the curb shifts to the roll of drums, | |
| As down the dusty avenue the long brown column comes, | |
| And their faces match their khaki. From Luzon’s tropic suns | |
| They took this tan, and the glint of their eyes like the glitter of their guns | |
| Flamed on the way to Pekin till they saw the flag still there. | 5 |
| They bear their faded colors past, and something in the air | |
| Lessens the roar of the city. One gray bystander sees | |
| The Stars and Stripes at Gettysburg and faces set like these | |
| When death broke battle’s mould. They pass, indomitable, strong, | |
| Wearing the deathless order of discipline. The throng | 10 |
| Gentile and Jew and Kelt and Hun and their own blood brothers thrill | |
| To the ripple of their cadenced ranks; for now the drums are still | |
| And the measured tread of feet that marched to set the Cubans free, | |
| Falls on the asphalt like the sound of breakers when the sea | |
| Strikes on the sands at midnight to mark the pulse of time, | 15 |
| And the nation’s heart-beat blends with them; the boys that breathless climb | |
| To a lamp-post or a column’s height, the girls whose ardent eyes | |
| Wake to a world of fighting men and the dream that never dies; | |
| Embattled, grim in touch with them; crude as brown powder grains | |
| That leap to life and shake the air when freedom fires the trains. | 20 |
| Essential, hard, dynamic, fit, and silent still they go, | |
| Down the pathway of their duty to a goal that none may know. | |
| Here is the nation’s last reserve, these and their next of kin | |
| When the ends of earth are looted bare and the years of wrath begin. | |
| For each heart guards its citadel and these shall serve alone | 25 |
| When millions fail and navies sink and forts are overthrown. | |
| They pass and the city’s tumult throbs through its arteries | |
| And fills them full of greed and lust, dishonor and disease, | |
| And dreams insane of peace unearned, decadence and disgrace; | |
| But still the red blood corpuscles shall vitalize the race. | 30 |
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