“ EYES IN THE AIR
Our guns are a league behind us, our target a mile below,
And there's never a cloud to blind us from the haunts of
our lurking foe--
Sunk pit whence his shrapnel tore us, support-trench crest-concealed,
As clear as the charts before us, his ramparts lie revealed.
His panicked watchers spy us, a droning threat in the void;
Their whistling shells outfly us--puff upon puff, deployed
Across the green beneath us, across the flanking grey,
In fume and fire to sheathe us and balk us of our prey.
Below, beyond, above her,
Their iron web is spun! ”

“ The blown rain stings, there is never a star, the
tracks are rivers of slime.
(You must harness up by guesswork with a
failing torch for light,
Instep-deep in unmade standings, for it's active-service time,
And our resting weeks are over, and we move
the guns to-night.)
The iron tires slither, the traces sag; their blind
hooves stumble and slide;
They are war-worn, they are weary, soaked with
sweat and sopped with rain. ”

“ Sending or still, these serve our will; the hidden eyes that mark
From gutted farm, from laddered tree that scans the furrowed slope,
From coigns of slag whose pit-ropes 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. ”

“ 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!
THE VOICE OF THE GUNS
We are the guns, and your masters! Saw ye our flashes?
Heard ye the scream of our shells in the night, and the
shuddering crashes? ”

“ No word from earth may reach us save, white against the ground,
The strips outspread to teach us whose ears are deaf to sound:
But down the winds that sear us, athwart our engine's shriek,
We send--and know they hear us, the ranging guns we speak. ”

“ Faint on the ears that strain to hear, their orders trickle down
"Degrees--twelve--left of zero line--corrector one three eight--
Three thousand." ... Shift our trails and lift the muzzles that
shall drown
The rifle's idle chatter when our sendings detonate. ”

“ Loose them, and shatter, and spare not. We are the guns!
THE END
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A
――――
BOOKS ON THE GREAT WAR
Published by
Houghton Mifflin Company
Thrilling stories of real adventure; graphic pictures of the fighting by men who actually fought; notable volumes dealing with the larger aspects of the struggle; in short, books for every taste and on every phase of the war may be found in these pages. ”