Lines written between 1 and 2.30 a.m. in a German dug-out
OH horrible! How can the pen describe
The ghastliness of that which meets the eye,
The devastation and the frightfulness?
It seems as if some superhuman force,
Vast and malevolent, had passed this way,
Tormented by the Furies till its hate
Became insensate and demoniac:
Then, prompted by its innate cruelty,
Had ravaged where it went and had destroyed
All that it met, and made the countryside
A scene of horror without parallel.
Vast craters pit the ground, no blade of grass
Is left to shew what was a fertile plain;
Now is all barren, rugged, hideous,
The nightmare landscape of a fevered brain.
And scattered over all the stricken field,
See lie the shattered bodies of the slain
In all the ghastly posturings of death,
Their attitudes suggesting all their pain;
While over all, despite the blazing sun,
There hangs the shadow of a lurking death,
And in the cannon's never-ceasing roar
One hears the knell of many friends and foes:
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