OPEN WARFARE.

Men said, "At last! at last the open battle!

Now shall we fight unfettered o'er the plain,

No more in catacombs be cooped like cattle,

Nor travel always in a devious drain!"

They were in ecstasies. But I was damping;

I like a trench, I have no lives to spare;

And in those catacombs, however cramping,

You did at least know vaguely where you were.

Ah, happy days in deep well-ordered alleys,

Where, after dining, probably with wine,

One felt indifferent to hostile sallies,

And with a pipe meandered round the line;

You trudged along a trench until it ended;

It led at least to some familiar spot;

It might not be the place that you'd intended,

But then you might as well be there as not.

But what a wilderness we now inhabit

Since this confounded "open" strife prevails!

It may be good; I do not wish to crab it,

But you should hear the language it entails,

Should see this waste of wide uncharted craters

Where it is vain to seek the companies,

Seeing the shell-holes are as like as taters

And no one knows where anybody is.

Oft in the darkness, palpitant and blowing,

Have I set out and lost the hang of things,

And ever thought, "Where can the guide be going?"

But trusted long and rambled on in rings,

For ever climbing up some miry summit,

And halting there to curse the contrite guide,

For ever then descending like a plummet

Into a chasm on the other side.

Oft have I sat and wept, or sought to study

With hopeless gaze the uninstructive stars,

Hopeless because the very skies were muddy;

I only saw a red malicious Mars;

Or pulled my little compass out and pondered,

And set it sadly on my shrapnel hat,

Which, I suppose, was why the needle wandered,

Only, of course, I never thought of that.

And then perhaps some 5ยท9's start dropping,

As if there weren't sufficient holes about;

I flounder on, hysterical and sopping,

And come by chance to where I started out,

And say once more, while I have no objection

To other people going to Berlin,

Give me a trench, a nice revetted section,

And let me stay there till the Bosch gives in!