Page:The Muse in Arms, Osborn (ed), 1917.djvu/97

Rh And sweating, dizzied, isolate

In the hot trench beneath,

We bide the next shrewd move of fate

Be it of life or death.

2. Night Bombardment

Softly in the silence the evening rain descends

The soft wind lifts the rain-mist, flurries it, and spends

Itself in mournful sighs, drifting from field to field,

Soaking the draggled sprays which the low hedges wield

As they labour in the wet and the load of the wind.

The last light is dimming.Night comes on behind.

I hear no sound but the wind and the rain,

And trample of horses, loud and lost again

Where the wagons in the mist rumble dimly on

Bringing more shell.

The last gleam is gone.

It is not day or night; only the mists unroll

And blind with their sorrow the sight of my soul.

I hear the wind weeping in the hollow overhead:

She goes searching for the forgotten dead

Hidden in the hedges or trodden into muck

Under the trenches or maybe limply stuck

Somewhere in the branches of a high, lonely tree—

He was a sniper once. They never found his body.

I see the mist drifting. I hear the wind, the rain,

And on my clammy face the oozed breath of the slain