| |
| THE FIRST to climb the parapet | |
| With “cricket balls” in either hand; | |
| The first to vanish in the smoke | |
| Of God-forsaken No Man’s Land; | |
| First at the wire and soonest through, | 5 |
| First at those red-mouthed hounds of hell, | |
| The Maxims, and the first to fall,— | |
| They do their bit and do it well. | |
| |
| Full sixty yards I’ve seen them throw | |
| With all that nicety of aim | 10 |
| They learned on British cricket-fields, | |
| Ah, bombing is a Briton’s game! | |
| Shell-hole to shell-hole, trench to trench, | |
| “Lobbing them over” with an eye | |
| As true as though it were a game | 15 |
| And friends were having tea close by. | |
| |
| Pull down some art-offending thing | |
| Of carven stone, and in its stead | |
| Let splendid bronze commemorate | |
| These men, the living and the dead. | 20 |
| No figure of heroic size, | |
| Towering skyward like a god; | |
| But just a lad who might have stepped | |
| From any British bombing squad. | |
| |
| His shrapnel helmet set atilt, | 25 |
| His bombing waistcoat sagging low, | |
| His rifle slung across his back: | |
| Poised in the very act to throw. | |
| And let some graven legend tell | |
| Of those weird battles in the West | 30 |
| Wherein he put old skill to use, | |
| And played old games with sterner zest. | |
| |
| Thus should he stand, reminding those | |
| In less-believing days, perchance, | |
| How Britain’s fighting cricketers | 35 |
| Helped bomb the Germans out of France. | |
| And other eyes than ours would see; | |
| And other hearts than ours would thrill; | |
| And others say, as we have said: | |
| “A sportsman and a soldier still!” | 40 |
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