A SONG OF THE GUNS
These are our masters, the slim
Grim muzzles that irk in the pit;
That chafe for the rushing of wheels,
For the teams plunging madly to bit
As the gunners wing down to unkey,
For the trails sweeping half-circle-right,
For the six breech-blocks clashing as one
To a target viewed clear on the sight--
Gray masses the shells search and tear
Into fragments that bunch as they run--
For the hour of the red battle-harvest,
The dream of the slaves of the gun!
We have bartered our souls to the guns;
Every fibre of body and brain
Have we trained to them, chained to them. Serfs?
Aye! but proud of the weight of our chain,
Of our backs that are bowed to their workings,
To hide them and guard and disguise,
Of our ears that are deafened with service,
Of hands that are scarred, and of eyes
Grown hawklike with marking their prey,
Of wings that are slashed as with swords
When we hover, the turn of a blade
From the death that is sweet to our lords.
THE VOICE OF THE SLAVES
By the ears and the eyes and the brain,
By the limbs and the hands and the wings,
We are slaves to our masters the guns;
But their slaves are the masters of kings!
HEADQUARTERS
A league and a league from the trenches,
from the traversed maze of the lines,--
Where daylong the sniper watches and daylong the
bullet whines,
And the cratered earth is in travail with mines and
with countermines,--
Here, where haply some woman dreamed, (are
those her roses that bloom
In the garden beyond the windows of my littered
working-room?)
We have decked the map for our masters as a bride
is decked for the groom.
Here, on each numbered lettered square,--cross-road
and mound and wire,
Loophole, redoubt, and emplacement, are the targets
their mouths desire,--
Gay with purples and browns and blues, have we
traced them their arcs of fire.
And ever the type-keys clatter; and ever our keen
wires bring
Word from the watchers a-crouch below, word
from the watchers a-wing;
And ever we hear the distant growl of our hid guns
thundering;
Hear it hardly, and turn again to our maps, where
the trench-lines crawl,
Red on the gray and each with a sign for the
ranging shrapnel's fall--
Snakes that our masters shall scotch at dawn, as is
written here on the wall.
For the weeks of our waiting draw to a close....
There is scarcely a leaf astir
In the garden beyond my windows where the
twilight shadows blur
The blaze of some woman's roses....
"Bombardment orders, sir."
GUN-TEAMS
Their rugs are sodden, their heads are down, their
tails are turned to the storm.
(Would you know them, you that groomed them
in the sleek fat days of peace,--
When the tiles rang to their pawings in the lighted
stalls and warm,--
Now the foul clay cakes on breeching-strap and
clogs the quick-release?)
The blown rain stings, there is never a star, the
tracks are rivers of slime.
(You must harness up by guesswork with a
failing torch for light,
Instep-deep in unmade standings, for it's active-service time,
And our resting weeks are over, and we move
the guns to-night.)
The iron tires slither, the traces sag; their blind
hooves stumble and slide;
They are war-worn, they are weary, soaked with
sweat and sopped with rain.
(You must hold them, you must help them, swing
your lead and centre wide
Where the greasy granite pave peters out to
squelching drain.)
There is shrapnel bursting a mile in front on the
road that the guns must take:
(You are nervous, you are thoughtful, you are
shifting in your seat,
As you watch the ragged feathers flicker orange
flame and break)--
But the teams are pulling steady down the
battered village street.
You have shod them cold, and their coats are long,
and their bellies gray with the mud;
They have done with gloss and polish, but the
fighting heart's unbroke.
We, who saw them hobbling after us down white
roads flecked with blood,
Patient, wondering why we left them, till we
lost them in the smoke;
Who have felt them shiver between our knees,
when the shells rain black from the skies,
When the bursting terrors find us and the lines
stampede as one;
Who have watched the pierced limbs quiver and
the pain in stricken eyes,
Know the worth of humble servants, foolish-faithful
to their gun!
EYES IN THE AIR
Our guns are a league behind us, our target a mile below,
And there's never a cloud to blind us from the haunts of
our lurking foe--
Sunk pit whence his shrapnel tore us, support-trench crest-concealed,
As clear as the charts before us, his ramparts lie revealed.
His panicked watchers spy us, a droning threat in the void;
Their whistling shells outfly us--puff upon puff, deployed
Across the green beneath us, across the flanking grey,
In fume and fire to sheathe us and balk us of our prey.
Below, beyond, above her,
Their iron web is spun!
Flicked but unsnared we hover,
Edged planes against the sun:
Eyes in the air above his lair,
The hawks that guide the gun!
No word from earth may reach us save, white against the ground,
The strips outspread to teach us whose ears are deaf to sound:
But down the winds that sear us, athwart our engine's shriek,
We send--and know they hear us, the ranging guns we speak.
Our visored eyeballs show us their answering pennant, broke
Eight thousand feet below us, a whirl of flame-stabbed smoke--
The burst that hangs to guide us, while numbed gloved fingers tap
From wireless key beside us the circles of the map.
Line--target--short or over--
Comes, plain as clock-hands run,
Word from the birds that hover,
Unblinded, tail to sun--
Word out of air to range them fair,
From hawks that guide the gun!
Your flying shells have failed you, your landward guns are dumb:
Since earth hath naught availed you, these skies be open! Come,
Where, wild to meet and mate you, flame in their beaks for breath,
Black doves! the white hawks wait you on the wind-tossed
boughs of death.
These boughs be cold without you, our hearts are hot for this,
Our wings shall beat about you, our scorching breath shall kiss:
Till, fraught with that we gave you, fulfilled of our desire,
You bank,--too late to save you from biting beaks of fire,--
Turn sideways from your lover,
Shudder and swerve and run,
Tilt; stagger; and plunge over
Ablaze against the sun,--
Doves dead in air, who clomb to dare
The hawks that guide the gun!