In Wetteren Hospital, Flanders, the writer saw a little peasant girl dying from the bayonet wounds in her back which the German soldiers had given her.

Cain slew only a brother,
A lad who was fair and strong,
His murder was careless and honest,
A heated and sudden wrong.
And Judas was kindly and pleasant,
For he snared an invincible man.
But you—you have spitted the children,
As they toddled and stumbled and ran.
She heard you sing on the high-road,
She thought you were gallant and gay;
Such men as the peasants of Flanders:
The friends of a child at play.
She saw the sun on your helmets,
The sparkle of glancing light.
She saw your bayonets flashing,
And she laughed at your Prussian might.
Then you gave her death for her laughter,
As you looked on her mischievous face.
You hated the tiny peasant,
With the hate of your famous race.
You were not frenzied and angry;
You were cold and efficient and keen.
Your thrust was as thorough and deadly
As the stroke of a faithful machine.
You stabbed her deep with your rifle:
You had good reason to sing,
As you footed it on through Flanders
Past the broken and quivering thing.
Something impedes your advancing,
A dragging has come on your hosts.
And Paris grows dim now, and dimmer,
Through the blur of your raucous boasts.
Your singing is sometimes broken
By guttural German groans.
Your ankles are wet with her bleeding,
Your pike is blunt from her bones.
The little peasant has tripped you.
She hangs to your bloody stride.
And the dimpled hands are fastened
Where they fumbled before she died.