"Ready?" He nodded. I turned my head
And nearly collapsed with fright.
Four of them were standing at my shoulder,
The others to the left and right.
Then, "Fire!" I shouted, and the gun leaped up
With a roar and a spurt of flame.
The sergeant gripped the handles while the belt ran through,
Never stopping to correct his aim.
Fearfully I turned, then jumped to my feet,
Forgetting all about the feed.
They were running like the wind up a long, steep hill,
With the thumb-and-finger man in the lead!
And high above the rattle and roar of the gun
I heard a despairing yell,
As Englishmen, Dutchmen, pikemen, bowmen,
Vanished in the night, pell-mell.
The men who were sleeping in the moonlit trench
Sat up and rubbed their eyes;
And one of them muttered in a drowsy voice:
"Wot to blazes is the row, you guys?"
The sergeant said: "That'll do! That'll do!"
But he whispered to me: "Keep mum!"
They wouldn't have believed that the row was all about
A finger and a huge, thick thumb.
SONNETS
I
I SEE across the chasm of flying years
The pyre of Dido on the vacant shore;
I see Medea's fury and hear the roar
Of rushing flames, the new bride's burning tears;
And ever as still another vision peers
Thro' memory's mist to stir me more and more,
I say that surely I have lived before
And known this joy and trembled with these fears.
