February j, 1916 LAND AND WATER. 
A SONG OF THE GUNS. 
By Gilbert Frankau. 
6.-THE OBSERVERS. 
Eiv the last light that leaps the night has hung, and shone, and died, 
While yet the breast-high fog of dawn is swathed about the plain, 
By hedge and track our slave;; go back, ths waning stars for guide . . . 
Eyes Oi our mouths, ths mists have cleared, the guns would speak again ! 
Faint on the ear that strains to hear, their orders trickle down : 
" D.^grees— twelve— left of zero line— ::orrector one three eight— 
Threa thousand "... Shift our trails and lift the muzzles that shall drod'u 
The rifle's idle chatter when our sendings detonate. 
Sending or still, these serve our will ; the hidden eyes that mark, 
From gutted farm, from laddered tree that scans the furrowed slopj, 
From coigns of slag whose pit-props sag on burrowed ways and dark. 
In open trench where sandbags hold the steady periscope. 
Waking, they know the instant foe, the bullets phutting by,. 
The blurring lens, the sodden map, the wires that leak or break ; 
Sleeping, they dream of shells that scream adown a sunless sky . . . 
And the splinters patter round them in their dug-outs as they wake. 
Not theirs, the wet glad bayonet, the red and racing hour, 
The rush that clears the bombing-post with knife and hand-grenade ; 
Not theirs the zest when, steel to breast, the last survivors cower . . 
Yet can ye hold the ground ye won, save these be there to aid ? 
Tn?se, that observe the shell's far swerve,, these of the quiet voice 
That bids " go on," repeats the range, corrects for fuie or line . . . 
Though dour the task their masters ask, what room for thought or choice ? 
This is ours by right of service, heedless gift of youthful eyne ! 
Careless they give while yet they live ; the dead we tasked too sore 
Bear witness we were naught begrudged of riches or of youth ; 
Careless they gave, across their grave our calling salvoes roar. 
And those we maimed come back to us in proof our dead speak truth ! 
7.-AMMUNITION COLUMN. 
I am only a cog in a giant machine, a link of an endless chain : 
Ani the rounds are drawn, and the rounds are fired, and ths empties return again ; 
Railroad, lorry, and limber, battery, column, and park ; 
To the shelf where the set fuze waits the breech, from the quay where the shells embark. 
We have watered and fed, and eaten our beef : the long dull day drags by, 
As I sit here watching our " Archibalds " strafing an empty sky : 
Puff and flash on the far-off blue round the speck one guesses the plane — 
Smoke and spark of the gun-machine that is fed by the endless chain. 
I am only a cog in a giant machine, a little link of the chain. 
Waiting a word from the wagon-lines that the guns are hungry again : 
Column-wagon to battery-wagon, and battery-wagon to gun ; 
To the loader kneeling 'twixt trail and -wheel from the shops where the steam-lathes run. 
There's a lone mule braying against the line where the mud cakes fetlock-decp ; 
There's a lone soul hurnming a hint of a song in the barn where the drivers sleep ; 
And I hear the pash of the orderly's horse as he canters him down the hne — 
Another cog in the gun-machine, a link in the self-same chain. 
I am only a cog in a giant machine, but a vital link of the chain ; 
And the Captain has sent from the wagon-line to fill his wagons again -. 
From wagon-limber to gunpit dump ; from loader's forearm at breech. 
To the working party that melts away lohen the shrapnel bullets screech. 
So the restless section pulls out once more in column of route from the right. 
At the tail of a blood-red afternoon ; so the flux of another night 
Bears back the wagons we fill at dawn to the sleeping column again. ... 
Cog on cog in the gun-machine, link on link in the chain ! 
N.B.— A Song of the Guns will be concluded in our next issue. 
