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 fuse 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 or 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!
_I 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.