Ant Hill
Black ants have made a musty mound
My purple pine tree under,
And I am often to be found,
Regarding it with wonder.
Yet as I watch, somehow it;s odd,
Above their busy striving
I feel like an ironic god
Surveying human striving.
Then one day came my serving maid,
And just in time I caught her,
For on each lusty arm she weighed
A pail of boiling water.
She said with glee: “When this I spill,
Of life they’ll soon be lacking.”
Said I: “If even one you kill,
You bitch! I’ll send you packing.”
Just think —ten thousand eager lives
In that toil—worn upcasting,
Their homes, their babies and their wives
Destroyed in one fell blasting!
Imagine that swift—scalding hell! . . .
And though, mayhap, it seems a
Fantastic, far—fetched parallel —
Remember . . . Hiroshima.
Other works by Robert W. Service...
