Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/286

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Even that fearsome pool is bright,

Under the cavern's brow!

So outward fair, that none might guess

The secret of its hideousness,

Nor know what nameless things are done

There, with the setting of the sun! E. Armine Wodehouse

HE first to climb the parapet

With "cricket balls" in either hand;

The first to vanish in the smoke

Of God-forsaken No Man's Land;

First at the wire and soonest through,

First at those red-mouthed hounds of hell,

The Maxims, and the first to fall,—

They do their bit and do it well.

Full sixty yards I've seen them throw

With all that nicety of aim

They learned on British cricket-fields.

Ah, bombing is a Briton's game!

Shell-hole to shell-hole, trench to trench,

"Lobbing them over" with an eye

As true as though it were a game

And friends were having tea close by.

Pull down some art-offending thing

Of carven stone, and in its stead

Let splendid bronze commemorate

These men, the living and the dead.

No figure of heroic size,

Towering skyward like a god;

But just a lad who might have stepped

From any British bombing squad.