There’s nothin’ doin’ now.  I wear me blan-
     kets like a toff. 
The way this fat nurse pets me, strewth, it’s
     well to be so sick,
A-dreamin’ of our contract ‘n’ the way we
     pulled it off. 
I reckon Haig is phonin’ Hughes:  “Hullo,
     there, Billy.  Quick—­
A dozen of the pushes and a thousan’ tons
     of brick!”

MUD.

This war’s a waste of slurry, and its at-
     mosphere is mud,
   All is bog from here to sunset.  Wadin’
     through
We’re the victims of a thicker sort of universal
     flood,
   With discomforts that old Noah never knew.

We have dubbed our trench The Cecil. 
     There’s a brass-plate and a dome,
   And a quagmire where the doormat used
     to be,
If you’re calling, second Tuesday is our reg’-
     lar day at home,
   So delighted if you’ll toddle in to tea!

There is mud along the corridors enough to
     bog a cow;
   In the air there hangs a musty kind of
     woof;
There’s a frog-pond in the parlour, and the
     kitchen is a slough. 
   She has neither doors nor windows, nor a
     roof.

When they post our bald somnambulist as
     missing from his flat
  We take soundings for the digger with a
     prop. 
By the day the board is gratis, by the week
     it’s half of that;
  For the season there’s a corresponding drop.

Opening off the spacious hallway is my natty
     little suite,
   A commodious and accessible abode. 
By judicious disposition, with exclusion of
     my feet,
   There is sleeping room for Oliver the toad.

Though the ventilation’s gusty, and in gobs
     the ceiling falls—­
   Which with oral respiration disagrees—­
Though there comes a certain quantity of
     seepage from the walls,
   There are some I knew in diggings worse
     than these.

On my right is Cobber Carkeek.  There’s a
     spring above his head,
   And his mattress is a special kind of clay. 
He’s a most punctilious bloke about the
     fashion of his bed,
   And he makes it with a shovel every day.

Man is dust.  If so, the Cobber has been
     puddled up a treat. 
   On domestic sanitation he’s a toff,
For he lights a fire on Sunday, bakes his sur-
     face in the heat,
   Then he takes a little maul, and cracks it
     off.

After hanging out a winter in this Cimmerian
     hole
   We’re forgetting sheets, and baths, and
     tidy skins. 
In the dark and deadly calm last night they
     took us on patrol. 
   Seven, little fellows, thinking of their sins.

It was ours like blinded snails to prowl the
     soggy, slimy night,
   With a feeler pricking out at every pore
For the death that stalks in darkness, or the
     blinking stab of light,
   And the other trifling matters that are war.