THE FLYING MAN.
When the still silvery dawn uprolls
And all the world is "standing to;"
When young lieutenants damn our souls
Because they're feeling cold and blue—
The bacon's trodden in the slush,
The baccy's wet, the stove's gone wrong—
Then, purring on the morning's hush,
We hear his cheerful little song.
The shafts of sunrise strike his wings,
Tinting them like a dragon-fly;
He bows to the ghost-moon and swings,
Flame-coloured, up the rosy sky.
He climbs, he darts, he jibes, he luffs;
Like a great bee he drones aloud;
He whirls above the shrapnel puffs,
And, laughing, ducks behind a cloud.
He rides aloof on god-like wings,
Taking no thought of wire or mud,
Saps, smells or bugs—the mundane things
That sour our lives and have our blood.
Beneath his sky-patrolling car
Toy guns their mimic thunders clap;
Like crawling ants whole armies are
That strive across a coloured map.
The roads we trudged with feet of lead
The shadows of his pinions skim;
The river where we piled our dead
Is but a silver thread to him.
"God of the eagle-winged machine,
What see you where aloft you roam?"
"Eastward, Die Schlossen von Berlin,
And West, the good white cliffs of home!"