When the still silvery dawn uprolls
And all the world is "standing to;"
When young lieutenants damn our souls
Because they're feeling cold and blue--
The bacon's trodden in the slush,
The baccy's wet, the stove's gone wrong--
Then, purring on the morning's hush,
We hear his cheerful little song.
The shafts of sunrise strike his wings,
Tinting them like a dragon-fly;
He bows to the ghost-moon and swings,
Flame-coloured, up the rosy sky.
He climbs, he darts, he jibes, he luffs;
Like a great bee he drones aloud;
He whirls above the shrapnel puffs,
And, laughing, ducks behind a cloud.
He rides aloof on god-like wings,
Taking no thought of wire or mud,
Saps, smells or bugs--the mundane things
That sour our lives and have our blood.
Beneath his sky-patrolling car
Toy guns their mimic thunders clap;
Like crawling ants whole armies are
That strive across a coloured map.
The roads we trudged with feet of lead
The shadows of his pinions skim;
The river where we piled our dead
Is but a silver thread to him.
"God of the eagle-winged machine,
What see you where aloft you roam?"
"Eastward, _Die Schlossen von Berlin_,
And West, the good white cliffs of home!"
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