A Song of the Guns

by Gilbert Frankau

SIGNALS

The hot wax drips from the flares

On the scrawled pink forms that litter

The bench where he sits; the glitter

Of stars is framed by the sandbags atop of the dug-out stairs.

And the lagging watch-hands creep;

And his cloaked mates murmur in sleep,--

Forms he can wake with a kick,--

And he hears, as he plays with the pressel-switch, the strapped

receiver click

On his ear that listens, listens;

And the candle-flicker glistens

On the rounded brass of the switch-board where the red wires

cluster thick.

Wires from the earth, from the air;

Wires that whisper and chatter

At night, when the trench-rats patter

And nibble among the rations and scuttle back to their lair;

Wires that are never at rest,--

For the linesmen tap them and test,

And ever they tremble with tone:--

And he knows from a hundred signals the buzzing call of his own,

The breaks and the vibrant stresses,--

The Z and the G and the S's

That call his hand to the answering key and his mouth to the

microphone.

For always the laid guns fret

On the words that his mouth shall utter,

When rifle and Maxim stutter

And the rockets volley to starward from the spurting parapet;

And always his ear must hark

To the voices out of the dark,--

For the whisper over the wire,

From the bombed and the battered trenches where the wounded moan

in the mire,--

For a sign to waken the thunder

Which shatters the night in sunder

With the flash of the leaping muzzles and the beat of battery-fire.

THE OBSERVERS

Ere the last light that leaps the night has hung and shone and died,

While yet the breast-high fog of dawn is swathed about the plain,

By hedge and track our slaves go back, the waning stars for guide,

Eyes of our mouths; the mists have cleared, the guns would speak again!

Faint on the ears that strain to hear, their orders trickle down

"Degrees--twelve--left of zero line--corrector one three eight--

Three thousand." ... Shift our trails and lift the muzzles that

shall drown

The rifle's idle chatter when our sendings detonate.

Sending or still, these serve our will; the hidden eyes that mark

From gutted farm, from laddered tree that scans the furrowed slope,

From coigns of slag whose pit-ropes sag on burrowed ways and dark,

In open trench where sandbags hold the steady periscope.

Waking, they know the instant foe, the bullets phutting by,

The blurring lens, the sodden map, the wires that leak or break!

Sleeping, they dream of shells that scream adown a sunless sky--

And the splinters patter round them in their dug-outs as they wake.

Not theirs, the wet glad bayonet, the red and racing hour,

The rush that clears the bombing-post with knife and hand-grenade;

Not theirs the zest when, steel to breast, the last survivors cower,--

Yet can ye hold the ground ye won, save these be there to aid?

These, that observe the shell's far swerve, these of the quiet voice,

That bids "go on," repeats the range, corrects for fuse or line...

Though dour the task their masters ask, what room for thought or choice?

This is ours by right of service, heedless gift of youthful eyne!

Careless they give while yet they live; the dead we tasked too sore

Bear witness we were naught begrudged of riches or of youth;

Careless they gave; across their grave our calling salvoes roar,

And those we maimed come back to us in proof our dead speak truth!

AMMUNITION COLUMN

I am only a cog in a giant machine, a link of an endless chain:--

And the rounds are drawn, and the rounds are fired,

and the empties return again;

'Railroad, lorry, and limber; battery, column, and park;

'To the shelf where the set fuse waits the breech, from

the quay where the shells embark.

We have watered and fed, and eaten our beef; the

long dull day drags by,

As I sit here watching our "Archibalds" strafing an empty sky;

Puff and flash on the far-off blue round the speck

one guesses the plane--

Smoke and spark of the gun-machine that is fed by the endless chain.

I am only a cog in a giant machine, a little link in the chain,

Waiting a word from the wagon-lines that the guns are hungry again:--

Column-wagon to battery-wagon, and battery-wagon to gun;

To the loader kneeling 'twixt trail and wheel from the

shops where the steam-lathes run.

There's a lone mule braying against the line where

the mud cakes fetlock-deep!

There's a lone soul humming a hint of a song in

the barn where the drivers sleep;

And I hear the pash of the orderly's horse as he

canters him down the lane--

Another cog in the gun-machine, a link in the selfsame chain.

I am only a cog in a giant machine, but a vital link in the chain;

And the Captain has sent from the wagon-line to

fill his wagons again;--

From wagon-limber to gunpit dump; from loader's forearm at breech

To the working party that melts away when the shrapnel

bullets screech.--

So the restless section pulls out once more in column

of route from the right,

At the tail of a blood-red afternoon; so the flux of another night

Bears back the wagons we fill at dawn to the sleeping column again...

Cog on cog in the gun-machine, link on link in the chain!

THE VOICE OF THE GUNS

We are the guns, and your masters! Saw ye our flashes?

Heard ye the scream of our shells in the night, and the

shuddering crashes?

Saw ye our work by the roadside, the gray wounded lying,

Moaning to God that he made them--the maimed and the dying?

Husbands or sons,

Fathers or lovers, we break them! We are the guns!

We are the guns and ye serve us! Dare ye grow weary,

Steadfast at nighttime, at noontime; or waking, when dawn

winds blow dreary

Over the fields and the flats and the reeds of the barrier water,

To wait on the hour of our choosing, the minute decided for slaughter?

Swift the clock runs;

Yes, to the ultimate second. Stand to your guns!

We are the guns and we need you! Here in the timbered

Pits that are screened by the crest and the copse

where at dusk ye unlimbered,

Pits that one found us--and, finding, gave life (did

he flinch from the giving?);

Laboured by moonlight when wraith of the dead

brooded yet o'er the living,

Ere with the sun's

Rising the sorrowful spirit abandoned its guns.

Who but the guns shall avenge him? Strip us for action!

Load us and lay to the centremost hair of the dial-sight's refraction.

Set your quick hands to our levers to compass the sped soul's assoiling;

Brace your taut limbs to the shock when the thrust

of the barrel recoiling

Deafens and stuns!

Vengeance is ours for our servants. Trust ye the guns!

Least of our bond-slaves or greatest, grudge ye the burden?

Hard is this service of ours which has only our service for guerdon:

Grow the limbs lax, and unsteady the hands, which

aforetime we trusted;

Flawed, the clear crystal of sight; and the clean

steel of hardihood rusted?

Dominant ones,

Are we not tried serfs and proven--true to our guns?

Ye are the guns! Are we worthy? Shall not these speak for us,

Out of the woods where the torn trees are slashed with

the vain bolts that seek for us,

Thunder of batteries firing in unison, swish of shell flighting,

Hissing that rushes to silence and breaks to the thud of alighting?

Death that outruns

Horseman and foot? Are we justified? Answer, O guns!

Yea! by your works are ye justified,--toil unrelieved;

Manifold labours, coördinate each to the sending achieved;

Discipline, not of the feet but the soul, unremitting, unfeigned;

Tortures unholy by flame and by maiming, known, faced, and disdained;

Courage that shuns

Only foolhardiness;--even by these are ye worthy your guns!

Wherefore--and unto ye only--power has been given;

Yea! beyond man, over men, over desolate cities and riven;

Yea! beyond space, over earth and the seas and the

sky's high dominions;

Yea! beyond time, over Hell and the fiends and

the Death-Angel's pinions!

Vigilant ones,

Loose them, and shatter, and spare not. We are the guns!

THE END

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