Only Mules

No matter; we are only mules
And slow to understand
We drown according to the rules
Of war, we contraband

War reckons us as shot and shell,
As so much metal lost.
And mourns the dollars gone to swell
The monstrous bill of cost.

Would that we had been wrought of steel
And not of quivering flesh!
Of iron, not of nerves that feel,
And maddened limbs that thresh

The sucking seas in stubborn strife
For that dim right of ours
To what no factory fashions, life,
No Edison endowers.

Our last wild screams are choked; you know
It does not matter, for
We're only mules that suffered so,
And contraband of war.