Page:More songs by the fighting men, soldier poets, second series, 1917.djvu/97

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P. H. B. Lyon

The Lay of the Bombardier

(Old style)

MY ways are lonely and apart,
My very name a thing of fear;
I am the man without a heart,
I am the Lord High Bombardier.


My mattins is the shrapnel's scream,
My evensong the bullet's crack;
The happy state of which I dream
To strafe and never be strafed back.


Oft-times with Red Hats hovering near
I hold a mystic high debate
On how to fill the Boche with fear,
On Frightfulness, or "What is Hate?"


How some bombs burst long ere they land,
Others, the choicest, as they fall;
How some dissect the thrower's hand,
While most will never burst at all.


With that spring-throated Juggernaut
That spits explosive at the sky.
No dark-browed scholar devil-taught
Could be more intimate than I.


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