THE HAPPY GARDENERS.

We were storemen, clerks and packers on
   an ammunition dump
Twice the size of Cootamundra, and the goods
   we had to hump
They were bombs as big as water-butts, and
   cartridges in tons,
Shells that looked like blessed gasmains, and
   a line in traction-guns.

We had struck a warehouse dignity in dealing
   with the stocks. 
It was, “Sign here, Mr. Eddie!” “Clarkson,
   forward to the socks!”
Our floor-walker was a major, with a nozzle
   like a peach,
And a stutter in his Trilbies; and a limping
   kind of speech.

We were off at eight to business, we were free
   for lunch at one,
And we talked of new Spring fashions, and the
   brisk trade being done. 
After five we sought our dugouts lying snug
   beneath the hill,
Each with hollyhocks before it and geraniums
   on the sill.

Singing “Home, Sweet home,” we swept,
   and scrubbed, and dusted up the place,
Then smoked out on the doorstep in the twi-
   light’s tender grace. 
After which with spade and rake we sought
   our special garden plot,
And we ’tended to the cabbage and the shrink-
   ing young shallot.

So long lived we unmolested that this seemed
   indeed “the life.” 
Set apart from mirk and worry and the inci-
   dence of strife;
And we trimmed our Kitchen Eden, swapping
   vegetable lore,
Whi1e the whole demented world beside was
   muddled up with war.

There was little talk of Boches and of bloody
   battle scenes,
But a deal about Bill’s spuds and Billy
   Carkeek’s butter-beans;
Porky specialised on onion and he had a sort
   of gift
For a cabbage plump and tender that it took
   two men to lift.

In the pleasant Sabbath morning, when the
   sun lit on our “street,”
And illumed the happy dugout with effulgence
   kind and sweet,
It was fine to see us forking, raking, picking
   off the bugs,
Treading flat the snails and woodlice and
   demolishing the slugs.

Then one day old Fritz got going.  He had
   a hint of us,
And the shell the blighter posted was as roomy
   as a ’bus;
He was groping round the dump, and kind of
   pecking after it;
When he plugged the hill the world heeled up,
   the dome of heaven split.

Then, 0 Gott and consternation!  Swooped a
   shell a and stuck her nose
In Carkeek’s beans.  Those beans came up! 
   A cry of grief arose! 
As we watched them—­plunk! another shell
   cut loose, and everywhere
Flew the spuds of Billy Murphy.  There were
   turnips in the air.

Bill! she tore a quarter-acre from the land-
   scape.  With it burst
Tommy’s carrots, and we watched them, and
   in whispers prayed and cursed. 
Then a wail of anguish ’scaped us.  Boomed
   in Porky’s cabbage plot
A detestable concussion.  Porky’s cabbages
   were not!