Tripping, he grabbed the wall; saw some one lie
Humped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug,
And stooped to give the sleeper’s arm a tug. 
“I’m looking for headquarters.”  No reply. 
“God blast your neck!” (For days he’d had no sleep,)
“Get up and guide me through this stinking place.” 
Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap,
And flashed his beam across the livid face
Terribly glaring up, whose eyes yet wore
Agony dying hard ten days before;
And fists of fingers clutched a blackening wound.

Alone he staggered on until he found
Dawn’s ghost that filtered down a shafted stair
To the dazed, muttering creatures underground
Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound. 
At last, with sweat of horror in his hair,
He climbed through darkness to the twilight air,
Unloading hell behind him step by step.

I STOOD WITH THE DEAD

I stood with the Dead, so forsaken and still: 
  When dawn was grey I stood with the Dead. 
And my slow heart said, “You must kill; you must kill: 
  Soldier, soldier, morning is red.”

On the shapes of the slain in their crumpled disgrace
  I stared for a while through the thin cold rain.... 
“O lad that I loved, there is rain on your face,
  And your eyes are blurred and sick like the plain.”

I stood with the Dead....  They were dead; they were dead;
  My heart and my head beat a march of dismay;
And gusts of the wind came dulled by the guns.... 
  “Fall in!” I shouted; “Fall in for your pay!”

SUICIDE IN TRENCHES

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain. 
No one spoke of him again.

* * * * *

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

ATTACK

At dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun
In the wild purple of the glowering sun
Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud
The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one,
Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire. 
The barrage roars and lifts.  Then, clumsily bowed
With bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear,
Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire. 
Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear,
They leave their trenches, going over the top,
While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists,
And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists,
Flounders in mud.  O Jesu, make it stop!