(And there is no sleep at night)
That you give me no respite,
        Mr. Fly?

An hour’s calm is with us,
        Mr. Fly;
And the endless battle strain,
And the shelling and the rain,
Ought to make it very plain,
        Mr. Fly—

That I need a little nap,
        Mr. Fly.
That I do need mighty well
Just to sun and rest a spell,
And to sleep here where I fell,
        Mr. Fly.

So have a heart, oh have a heart!
        Mr. Fly.
If you’re looking for a fight
And you must come ’round and bite,
Make your visit in the night,
        Mr. Fly.

THE SALVATION ARMY WITH THE A. E. F.

You kept no roped-off rows of chairs
    Or clubs “For Officers Only,”
But you toiled for John Doe when he was
    Cold, tired, wet and lonely.

You didn’t squander millions
    On soldiers warming benches,
But you worked like blazes for the ones
    That frequented the trenches.

You didn’t stick to cast-iron rules
    Of business most punctilious,
And you never treated Private Doe
    With manner supercilious.

You had no boundless backing—
    But just inside your doors
It seemed like, “Feel to home, Bill—
    Sit down, the place is yours.”

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.

Should we say “all,” or modify
    Our statement? Any fool
Knows that exceptions always rise
    To prove an iron-clad rule.

And so in this case we can name
    Some shell-holes we have met,
The thought of whose engulfing sides
    Clings in our memory yet.

They were the holes we rolled into—
    When iron or bullet struck—
Cursing the cursed Prussian,
    And blessing our blesséd luck.

Oh lovely, beauteous shell-hole,
    Wherein we helpless lay,
A wondrous couch of velvet
    Ye seemed to us that day.

Our blood it stained your cushions
    A deep and richer red,
As shrieking messengers of death
    Sped harmless overhead.

Swept whining in their blood-lust,
    Hell’s music, bleak and grim,
Splitting in rage the edges
    Of your all-protecting rim.

Oh shell-holes, murderous shell-holes,
    In vales of grass and wheat—
On hillside and in forest,
    In road and village street—

Your toll of suffering and death
    Is flashed to East and West—
But tell they of the wounded
    Ye’ve sheltered in your breast?

FOOD.

We’ve eaten at the Plaza, at Sherry’s and the Ritz—
The Bellevue and the Willard and the Ponce de Leon
    too.
We’ve sampled all the cooking of the Savoy and
    Meurice,
Through a palate-tickling riot that Lucullus never
    knew.

From tables where the Northern Fires greet the
    coming night—
To Raffles out in Singapore and the Palace in Bombay;
From Shepheard’s (which means Cairo) to that little
    hostelry
Way down in Trinchinopoly where purring punkahs
    sway.

We’ve traveled north, we’ve traveled south by all
    routes known to man—
We’ve traveled east, we ’ve traveled west by some they
    scarcely came:
From canvasback and terrapin to Russian caviar,
From venison to bird-nest soup and curried things
    and game.

We’ve put them all beneath our belt with consummate
    address:
We’ve risen from the laden board and smacked our
    jowl in glee.
With organs sound and healthy we have murdered
    each menu
And left the wreck of good things with a gourmet’s
    ecstasy.

But do you wish to know the feasts that permeated
    deep—
That stirred the very bottom of my stomach to the
    core?
Quisine that brought such wondrous bliss, but satiated
    not, That saturating satisfied, but still left room for more?

The place—a little half deserted town in northern
    France:
The time—a time of carnage, of wanton strife and
    hate:
And I and my battalion on reserve a week or two
Till they call us to the Front again to force the hands
    of Fate.

Just from the Commissary, the Salvation or the Y,
I’ve got a bar of chocolate, some butter and some cake;
A canteen full of milk, and eggs, from the old
    farmhouse near by,
And with this tout ensemble you can see I’m sitting
    jake.

I’ve entered now a peasant’s house—an ancient,
    kindly dame—
Who’s seen me several times before, and knows just
    what I wish:
So the frying-pan is gotten out—the pewter fork and
    knife— A big bowl and the skillet and a large, substantial
    dish.

And I’m breaking up the bar of chocolate in a mighty
    bowl
(The while the eggs are frying, “Sur le plat, oui, s’il
    vous plait”),
And pouring from my canteen’s gurgling mouth a
    draught of milk,
To expedite proceedings in a purely tactful way.

And now the spluttering eggs are done, the chocolate’s
    hot and rich;
I have my feet beneath the board, the pewter weapons
    near:
A hunger from a front-line trench—the stomach of a
    goat—
And a battle-line that’s very far, though still the guns
    ring clear.

And thus, too full for utterance, I gently draw the
    veil—
So leave me, kindly reader, in my joy—
And maybe you will understand why other dinners
    pale,
And in comparison with this, appear to clog and cloy.

OVER THE TOP.

We’ve soldiered many, many moons
    In this old plugging war,
And all the ills and all the thrills,
    We’ve had ’em o’er and o’er.

Shell-fire, G. I. Cans and Gas—
    Night work in No Man’s Land—
And everything that calls for nerve,
    Endurance, guts and sand.

We’ve argued which we liked the worst—
    Machine-guns, gas or shell.
We’ve ruminated carefully—
    And done it