| WELL, how are things in Heaven? I wish you’d say, | |
| Because I’d like to know that you’re all right. | |
| Tell me, have you found everlasting day, | |
| Or been sucked in by everlasting night? | |
| For when I shut my eyes your face shows plain; | 5 |
| I hear you make some cheery old remark— | |
| I can rebuild you in my brain, | |
| Though you’ve gone out patrolling in the dark. | |
| |
| You hated tours of trenches; you were proud | |
| Of nothing more than having good years to spend; | 10 |
| Longed to get home and join the careless crowd | |
| Of chaps who work in peace with Time for friend. | |
| That’s all washed out now. You’re beyond the wire: | |
| No earthly chance can send you crawling back; | |
| You’ve finished with machine-gun fire— | 15 |
| Knocked over in a hopeless dud-attack. | |
| |
| Somehow I always thought you’d get done in, | |
| Because you were so desperate keen to live: | |
| You were all out to try and save your skin, | |
| Well knowing how much the world had got to give. | 20 |
| You joked at shells and talked the usual ‘shop,’ | |
| Stuck to your dirty job and did it fine: | |
| With ‘Jesus Christ! when will it stop? | |
| Three years ... It’s hell unless we break their line.’ | |
| |
| So when they told me you’d been left for dead | 25 |
| I wouldn’t believe them, feeling it must be true. | |
| Next week the bloody Roll of Honour said | |
| ‘Wounded and missing’—(That’s the thing to do | |
| When lads are left in shell-holes dying slow, | |
| With nothing but blank sky and wounds that ache, | 30 |
| Moaning for water till they know | |
It’s night, and then it’s not worth while to wake!)
. . . . | |
| Good-bye, old lad! Remember me to God, | |
| And tell Him that our Politicians swear | |
| They won’t give in till Prussian Rule’s been trod | 35 |
| Under the Heel of England ... Are you there?... | |
| Yes ... and the War won’t end for at least two years; | |
| But we’ve got stacks of men ... I’m blind with tears, | |
| Staring into the dark. Cheero! | |
| I wish they’d killed you in a decent show. | 40 |
