A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919/Lines Written in a Fire-Trench

by Walter Scott Stuart Lyon

LINES WRITTEN IN A FIRE-TRENCH^[1]

TIS midnight, and above the hollow trench,
Seen through a gaunt wood's battle-blasted trunks
And the stark rafters of a shattered grange,
The quiet sky hangs huge and thick with stars.
And through the vast gloom, murdering its peace,
Guns bellow and their shells rush swishing ere
They burst in death and thunder, or they fling
Wild jangling spirals round the screaming air.
Bullets whine by, and Maxims drub like drums,
And through the heaped confusion of all sounds
One great gun drives its single vibrant "Broum,"
And scarce five score of paces from the wall
Of piled sandbags and barb-toothed nets of wire,
(So near and yet what thousand leagues away!)
The unseen foe both adds and listens to
The self-same discord, eyed by the same stars.
Deep darkness hides the desolated land,
Save where a sudden flare sails up and bursts
In whitest glare above the wilderness,
And for one instant lights with lurid pallor
The tense, packed faces in the black redoubt.

W. S. S. Lyon

 

1. Written in fire trench above "Glencorse Wood," Westhoeck, April 11, 1915.