Ere the last light that leaps the night has hung and shone and died,
While yet the breast-high fog of dawn is swathed about the plain,
By hedge and track our slaves go back, the waning stars for guide-
Eyes of our mouths, the mists have cleared, the guns would speak again ?
Faint on the ear that strains to hear, their orders trickle down:
“Degrees — twelve — left of zero line — corrector one three eight —
Three thousand.” . . . Shift our trails, and lift the muzzles that shall drown
The rifle’s idle chatter when our sendings detonate.
Sending or still, these serve our will; the hidden eyes that mark,
From gutted farm, from laddered tree that scans the furrowed slope,
From coigns of slag whose pit-props sag on burrowed ways and dark,
In open trench where sandbags mask the steady periscope.
Waking, they know the instant foe, the bullets phutting by,
The blurring lens, the sodden map, the wires that leak or break:
Sleeping, they dream of shells that scream adown a sunless sky . . .
And the splinters patter round them in their dug-outs as they wake.
Not theirs, the wet glad bayonet, the red and racing hour,
The rush that clears the bombing-post with knife and hand-grenade;
Not theirs the zest when, steel to breast, the last survivors cower:
Yet can ye hold the ground ye won, save these be there to aid;
These, that observe the shell’s far swerve, these of the quiet voice
That bids “go on,” repeats the range, corrects for fuze or line? . . .
Though dour the task their masters ask, what room for thought or choice
This is ours by right of service, heedless gift of youthful eyne.
Careless they give while yet they live : the dead we tasked too sore
Bear witness we were naught begrudged of riches, naught of youth;
Careless they gave; across their grave our calling salvoes roar,
And those we maimed come back to us in proof our dead speak truth.
(Gilbert Frankau)
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Based on Topics: Night Poems, Youth Poems, Sleep Poems, Money & Wealth Poems, Truth Poems, Service Poems, Sleeping PoemsBased on Keywords: breast-high, muzzles, burrowed, slag, dug-outs, sandbags, corrects, begrudged, periscope, hand-grenade, laddered