Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/300

 300 MEMORIES

IS midnight, and above the hollow trench,

Seen through a gaunt wood's battle-blasted trunks

And the stark rafters of a shattered grange,

The quiet sky hangs huge and thick with stars.

And through the vast gloom, murdering its peace,

Guns bellow and their shells rush swishing ere

They burst in death and thunder, or they fling

Wild jangling spirals round the screaming air.

Bullets whine by, and Maxims drub like drums,

And through the heaped confusion of all sounds

One great gun drives its single vibrant "Broum,"

And scarce five score of paces from the wall

Of piled sandbags and barb-toothed nets of wire,

(So near and yet what thousand leagues away!)