Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/294

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For the weeks of our waiting draw to a close. . . . There is scarcely a leaf astir

In the garden beyond my windows, where the twilight shadows blur

The blaze of some woman's roses. . . . "Bombardment orders, sir." Gilbert Frankau

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.