Part 2 (1/2)
O ... but it's cold--I soak in the rain-- Shrapnel found me--I shan't come home again-- No, not home again!
The mourning voices trail Away into rain, into darkness ... the pale Soughing of the night drifts on in between.
_The Voices were as if the dead had never been._
O melancholy heavens, O melancholy fields, The glad, full darkness grows complete and s.h.i.+elds Me from your appeal.
With a terrible delight I hear far guns low like oxen at the night.
Flames disrupt the sky.
The work is begun.
”Action!” My guns crash, flame, rock and stun Again and again. Soon the soughing night Is loud with their clamour and leaps with their light.
The imperative chorus rises sonorous and fell: My heart glows lighted as by fires of h.e.l.l.
Sharply I pa.s.s the terse orders down.
The guns blare and rock. The hissing rain is blown Athwart the hurtled sh.e.l.l that shrilling, shrilling goes Away into the dark, to burst a cloud of rose Over German trenches.
A pause: I stand and see Lifting into the night like founts incessantly The pistol-lights' pale spores upon the glimmering air....
Under them furrowed trenches empty, pallid, bare....
And rain snowing trenchward ghostly and white.
O dead in the hedges, sleep ye well to-night!
III.--COMRADES: AN EPISODE
Before, before he was aware The 'Verey' light had risen ... on the air It hung glistering....
And he could not stay his hand From moving to the barbed wire's broken strand.
A rifle cracked.
He fell.
Night waned. He was alone. A heavy sh.e.l.l Whispered itself pa.s.sing high, high overhead.
His wound was wet to his hand: for still it bled On to the glimmering ground.
Then with a slow, vain smile his wound he bound, Knowing, of course, he'd not see home again-- Home whose thought he put away.
His men Whispered: ”Where's Mister Gates?” ”Out on the wire.”
”I'll get him,” said one....
Dawn blinked, and the fire Of the Germans heaved up and down the line.
”Stand to!”
Too late! ”I'll get him.” ”O the swine!
When we might get him in yet safe and whole!”
”Corporal didn't see 'un fall out on patrol, Or he'd 'a got 'un.” ”Sss.h.!.+”
”No talking there.”
A whisper: ”'A went down at the last flare.”
Meanwhile the Maxims toc-toc-tocked; their swish Of bullets told death lurked against the wish.
No hope for him!
His corporal, as one shamed, Vainly and helplessly his ill-luck blamed.
Then Gates slowly saw the morn Break in a rosy peace through the lone thorn By which he lay, and felt the dawn-wind pa.s.s Whispering through the pallid, stalky gra.s.s Of No-Man's Land....