Page:The Muse in Arms, Osborn (ed), 1917.djvu/99

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BATTLE
57

Sharply I pass the terse orders down.
The guns stun and rock. The hissing rain is blown
Athwart the hurtling shell that shrilling, shrilling goes
Away into the dark to burst a cloud of rose
Over their trenches.


A pause: I stand and see
Lifting into the night like founts incessantly,
The pistol-lights' pale spores upon the glimmering air. . . .
Under them furrowed trenches empty, pallid, bare. . . .
And rain snowing trenchward ghostly and white,
O dead in the hedges, sleep ye well to-night!