Kitabı oku: «The Ballad of Ensign Joy», sayfa 4

 
With hers in the studio glass?
"What's wrong with that mir-
ror?"' he cries.
But only the Sergeant's voice
replies:
"Wake up, Sir! The Gas —
the Gas!"
 
 
IS it a part of the dream of
dread?
What are the men about?
Each one sticking a haunted
head
Into a spectral clout!
Funny, the dearth of gibe and
joke,
When each one looks like a pig
in a poke,
Not omitting the snout!
 
 
THERE'S your mask, Sir! No
time to lose!"
Ugh, what a gallows shape!
Partly white cap, and partly
noose!
Somebody ties the tape.
Goggles of sorts, it seems, inset:
Cock them over the parapet,
Study the battlescape.
 
 
ENSIGN JOY'S in the second
line —
And more than a bit cut off;
A furlong or so down a green
incline
The fire-trench curls in the
trough.
Joy cannot see it – it's in the bed
Of a river of poison that brims
instead.
He can only hear – a cough!
 
 
NOTHING to do for the
Companies there —
Nothing but waiting now,
While the Gas rolls up on the
balmy air,
And a small bird cheeps on a
bough.
All of a sudden the sky seems full
Of trusses of lighted cotton-wool
And the enemy's big bow-
wow!
 
 
THE firmament cracks with
his airy mines,
And an interlacing hail
Threshes the clover between our
lines,
As a vile invisible flail.
And the trench has become a
mighty vice
That holds us, in skins of molten
ice,
For the vapors that fringe the
veil.
 
 
IT'S coming – in billowy swirls
– as smoke
From the roof a world on fire.
It – comes! And a lad with a
heart of oak
Knows only that heart's de-
sire!
His masked lips whimper but one
dear name —
And so is he lost to inward shame
That he thrills at the word:
"Re-tire!"
 
 
WHOSE is the order, thrice
renewed?
Ensign Joy cannot tell :
Only, that way lies Ermyntrude,
And the other way this hell!
Three men leap from the pois-
oned fosse,
Three men plunge from the para-
dos,
And – their – officer – as well!
 
 
NOW, as he flies at their fly-
ing heels,
He awakes to his deep dis-
grace,
But the yawning pit of his shame
reveals
A way of saving his face:
He twirls his stick to a shep-
herd's crook,
To trip and bring one of them
back to book,
As though he'd been giving
chase!
 
 
HE got back gasping —
"They'd too much start!"
"I'd've shot 'em instead!"
said Wren.
"That was your job, Sir, if you'd
the 'eart —
But it wouldn't 've been you,
then.
I pray my Lord I may live to see
A firing-party in front o' them
three!"
(That's what he said to the
men.)
 
 
NOW, Joy and Wren, of
Company B,
Are a favourite firm of mine;
And the way they reinforced A,
C, and D
Was, perhaps, not unduly fine;
But it meant a good deal both to
Wren and Joy —
That grim, gaunt man, but that
desperate boy! —