SHELL-HOLES.

They're ugly, jagged, cone-shaped holes

That litter up the ground,

That ruin all the landscape

For miles and miles around.

That pock-mark fertile fields of green —

That rip the hard French roads,

And catch the lumbering trucks at night

Agroan beneath their loads.

And some of them are little uns

The shrill one-pounders plow —

About a meter — edge to edge —

But large enough, I trow.

And some of them nigh twice as broad,

And rather more straight down,

The “77” Boches’ gift,

Of dubious renown.

And some of them a dozen feet

From rim to ragged rim,

And deep enough to hide a horse —

A crater, gaunt and grim.

And some of them are yellow-black,

Where clings the reek of gas,

( But here we do not pause to gaze,

Nor linger as we pass ).

And some of them are water-fouled —

Or dried and parched and dun;

And some of them are newly turned —

Fresh blotches‘ neath the sun.

But all spell red destruction,

Blind rage and blinding hate,

To them who charge the shell-swept zone

Or in the trenches wait.

Should we say “all,” or modify

Our statement? Any fool

Knows that exceptions always rise

To prove an iron-clad rule.

And so in this case we can name

Some shell-holes we have met,

The thought of whose engulfing sides

Clings in our memory yet.

They were the holes we rolled into —

When iron or bullet struck —

Cursing the cursed Prussian,

And blessing our blessed luck.

Oh lovely, beauteous shell-hole,

Wherein we helpless lay,

A wondrous couch of velvet

Ye seemed to us that day.

Our blood it stained your cushions

A deep and richer red,

As shrieking messengers of death

Sped harmless overhead.

Swept whining in their blood-lust,

Hell's music, bleak and grim,

Splitting in rage the edges

Of your all-protecting rim.

Oh shell-holes, murderous shell-holes,

In vales of grass and wheat —

On hillside and in forest,

In road and village street —

Your toll of suffering and death

Is flashed to East and West —

But tell they of the wounded

Ye've sheltered in your breast?