A SONG OF THE GUNS

NOTE

A Song of the Guns was written under what are probably the most remarkable conditions in which a poem has ever been composed. The author, who is now serving in Flanders, was present at the battle of Loos, and during a lull in the fighting--when the gunners, who had been sleepless for five nights, were resting like tired dogs under their guns--he jotted down the main theme of the poem. After the battle the artillery brigade to which he was attached was ordered to Ypres, and it was during the long trench warfare in this district, within sight of the ruined tower of Ypres Cathedral, that the poem was finally completed. The last three stanzas were written at midnight in Brigade Headquarters with the German shells screaming over into the ruined town.

CONTENTS

The Voice of the Slaves
Headquarters
Gun-Teams
Eyes in the Air
Signals
The Observers
Ammunition Column
The Voice of the Guns

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