Fight on the Play-Ground

Although this haiku from Clark Ashton Smith (CAS) was included in his "Childhood" grouping of poems, it was not included in the selection from that grouping that was published in his omnibus Selected Poems (1971).  Likewise, it is not available on The Eldritch Clark, so here's the complete text:

Agonists with bloody noses,
How we slugged and mauled, 

Swore and squalled.

I like the transition that moves through the past tense verbs "slugged", "mauled", and "squalled".  When the poem is read aloud, the last of those verbs sounds like an amalgamation of "slugged" and "mauled", allowing for a very animated reading built around that wordplay.