<html xmlns:tei="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0"><body><h1 align="center" class="head">After the Salvo.</h1><div class="stanza"><p class="line">UP and down, up and down </p><p class="line">They go, the gray rat, and the brown. </p><p class="line">The telegraph lines are tangled hair, </p><p class="line">Motionless on the sullen air </p><p class="line">An engine has fallen on its back, </p><p class="line">With crazy wheels, on a twisted track </p><p class="line">All ground to dust is the little town. </p><p class="line">Up and down, up and down </p><p class="line">They go, the gray rat, and the brown </p><p class="line">A skull, torn out of the graves near by, </p><p class="line">Gapes in the grass. A butterfly, </p><p class="line">In azure irridescence new, </p><p class="line">Floats into the world, across the dew </p><p class="line">Between the flow'rs. Have we lost our way,</p><p class="line"> Or are we toys of a god at play, </p><p class="line">Who do these things on a young Spring day?</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Where the salvo fell, on a splintered ledge </p><p class="line">Of ruin, at the crater's edge, </p><p class="line">A poppy lives: and young, and fair, </p><p class="line">The dewdrops hang on the spider's stair, </p><p class="line">With every rainbow still unhurt</p><p class="line">From leaflet unto leaflet girt. </p><p class="line">Man's house is crushed ; the spider's lives </p><p class="line">Inscrutably He takes, and gives, </p><p class="line">Who guards not any temple here, </p><p class="line">Save the temple of the gossamer.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Up and down, up and down </p><p class="line">They go, the gray rat and the brown: </p><p class="line">A pistol cracks: they too are dead.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">The nightwind rustles overhead.</p></div></body></html> · Great War