Читать книгу Ardours and Endurances; Also, A Faun's Holiday & Poems and Phantasies - Robert Nichols - Страница 19
I.—NOON
ОглавлениеIt is midday: the deep trench glares. …
A buzz and blaze of flies. …
The hot wind puffs the giddy airs. …
The great sun rakes the skies.
No sound in all the stagnant trench
Where forty standing men
Endure the sweat and grit and stench,
Like cattle in a pen.
Sometimes a sniper's bullet whirs
Or twangs the whining wire;
Sometimes a soldier sighs and stirs
As in hell's frying fire.
From out a high cool cloud descends
An aeroplane's far moan. …
The sun strikes down, the thin cloud rends. …
The black speck travels on.
And sweating, dizzied, isolate
In the hot trench beneath,
We bide the next shrewd move of fate
Be it of life or death.
