<html xmlns:tei="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0"><body><h1 align="center" class="head">Headquarters</h1><div class="stanza"><p class="line">A <span class="smallcaps">league</span> and a league from the trenches -- from the traversed maze of the lines,</p><p class="line">Where daylong the sniper watches and daylong the bullet whines,</p><p class="line">And the cratered earth is in travail with mines and with countermines --</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Here, where haply some woman dreamed (are those her roses that bloom</p><p class="line">In the garden beyond the windows of my littered working room?)</p><p class="line">We have decked the map for our masters as a bride is decked for the groom.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Fair, on each lettered numbered square -- crossroad and mound and wire,</p><p class="line">Loophole, redoubt, and emplacement -- lie the targets their mouths desire;</p><p class="line">Gay with purples and browns and blues, have we traced them their arcs of fire.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">And ever the type-keys chatter; and ever our keen wires bring</p><p class="line">Word from the watchers a-crouch below, word from the watchers a-wing:</p><p class="line">And ever we hear the distant growl of our hid guns thundering.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Hear it hardly, and turn again to our maps, where the trench lines crawl,</p><p class="line">Red on the gray and each with a sign for the ranging shrapnel's fall --</p><p class="line">Snakes that our masters shall scotch at down, as is written here on the wall.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">For the weeks of our waiting draw to a close.... There is scarcely a leaf astir</p><p class="line">In the garden beyond my windows, where the twilight shadows blur</p><p class="line">The blaze of some woman's roses.... "Bombardment orders, sir."</p></div><p class="byline">Gilbert Frankau</p></body></html> · Great War