Even that fearsome pool is bright,
Under the cavern's brow!
So outward fair, that none might guess
The secret of its hideousness,
Nor know what nameless things are done
There, with the setting of the sun!
THE first to climb the parapet
With "cricket balls" in either hand;
The first to vanish in the smoke
Of God-forsaken No Man's Land;
First at the wire and soonest through,
First at those red-mouthed hounds of hell,
The Maxims, and the first to fall,—
They do their bit and do it well.
Full sixty yards I've seen them throw
With all that nicety of aim
They learned on British cricket-fields.
Ah, bombing is a Briton's game!
Shell-hole to shell-hole, trench to trench,
"Lobbing them over" with an eye
As true as though it were a game
And friends were having tea close by.
Pull down some art-offending thing
Of carven stone, and in its stead
Let splendid bronze commemorate
These men, the living and the dead.
No figure of heroic size,
Towering skyward like a god;
But just a lad who might have stepped
From any British bombing squad.