class="large">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

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A

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A SOLDIER OF THE LEGION
E. MORLAE

An incomparable account of the great offensive of September, 1915; graphic, thrilling, and filled with the Foreign Legion's own dare-devil spirit. With frontispiece.

A HILLTOP ON THE MARNE
MILDRED ALDRICH

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