Some things we fain remember—
Some things we fain forget—
But you, oh kindly people,
Live in our memory yet.
SHELL-HOLES.
They’re ugly, jagged, cone-shaped holes
That litter up the ground,
That ruin all the landscape
For miles and miles around.
That pock-mark fertile fields of green—
That rip the hard French roads,
And catch the lumbering trucks at night
Agroan beneath their loads.
And some of them are little uns
The shrill one-pounders plow—
About a meter—edge to edge—
But large enough, I trow.
And some of them nigh twice as broad,
And rather more straight down,
The “77” Boches’ gift,
Of dubious renown.
And some of them a dozen feet
From rim to ragged rim,
And deep enough to hide a horse—
A crater, gaunt and grim.
And some of them are yellow-black,
Where clings the reek of gas,
(But here we do not pause to gaze,
Nor linger as we pass).
And some of them are water-fouled—
Or dried and parched and dun;
And some of them are newly turned—
Fresh blotches ’neath the sun.
But all spell red destruction,
Blind rage and blinding hate,
To them who charge the shell-swept zone
Or in the trenches wait.