Page:Poems of the Great War - Cunliffe.djvu/116

 90 ADJUTANT GILBERT FRANKAU

��HEADQUARTERS

A LEAGUE and a league from the trenches — from

the traversed maze of the Hnes, Where daylong the sniper watches and daylong the

bullet whines, And the cratered earth is in travail with mines and

with countermines —

��Here, where haply some woman dreamed (are those

her roses that bloom In the garden beyond the windows of my littered

working room ?) We have decked the map for our masters as a bride

is decked for the groom.

��Fair, on each lettered numbered square — cross- road and mound and wire.

Loophole, redoubt and emplacement — lie the tar- gets their mouths desire ;

Gay with purples and browns and blues, have we traced them their arcs of fire.

�� �