<html xmlns:tei="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0"><body><h1 align="center" class="head">The Man in the Trench</h1><div class="stanza"><p class="line"><span class="smallcaps">Can</span> you not hear me, young man in the street?</p><p class="line">Is it nothing to you who pass by,</p><p class="line">Who down the dim-lit ways in thousands roam?</p><p class="line">From here I watch you, through the driving sleet,</p><p class="line">Under the evening sky,</p><p class="line">Hurrying home.</p><p class="line">Home! -- how the word sounds like a bell --</p><p class="line">I wonder can you know, as I know well,</p><p class="line">That in this trench</p><p class="line">Of death and stench</p><p class="line">I stand between your home and hell.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">I am the roof that shields you from the weather,</p><p class="line">I am the gate that keeps the brigand back,</p><p class="line">When pillage, fire, and murder come together,</p><p class="line">I am the wall that saves your home from sack.</p><p class="line">Man! when you look upon the girl you prize,</p><p class="line">Can you imagine horror in those eyes?</p><p class="line">You have not seen, you cannot understand,</p><p class="line">This trench is England, all this ruined land</p><p class="line">Is where you wander, street, or field, or strand,</p><p class="line">Save for God's grace, and for the guns that rest</p><p class="line">Upon this dripping mudbank of the west.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Our blood has stained your threshold -- will you stain</p><p class="line">Your soul, give nothing and take all our gain?</p><p class="line">Why did I come? I ask not, nor repent;</p><p class="line">Something blazed up inside me, and I went.</p><p class="line">The khaki fringe is frayed, and now a rent</p><p class="line">Needs men -- needs men, and I am almost spent.</p><p class="line">Night, and the "ready"... so sleep well, my friend...</p><p class="line">The guns again are going... I must stick it to the end.</p></div><p class="byline">-- James Bernard Fagan.</p></body></html> · Great War