HEADQUARTERS

                 A league and a league from the trenches -- from the traversed
                 maze of the lines,
                 Where daylong the sniper watches and daylong the bullet
                 whines,
                 And the cratered earth is in travail with mines and with
                 countermines --

                 Here, where haply some woman dreamed (are those her roses
                 that bloom
                 In the garden beyond the windows of my littered working
                 room?)
                 We have decked the map for our masters as a bride is decked
                 for the groom.

                 Fair, on each lettered numbered square -- crossroad and
                 mound and wire,
                 Loophole, redoubt, and emplacement -- lie the targets their
                 mouths desire;
                 Gay with purples and browns and blues, have we traced them
                 their arcs of fire.

                 And ever the type-keys chatter; and ever our keen wires bring
                 Word from the watchers a-crouch below, word from the
                 watchers a-wing:
                 And ever we hear the distant growl of our hid guns thundering.

                 Hear it hardly, and turn again to our maps, where the trench
                 lines crawl,
                 Red on the gray and each with a sign for the ranging shrapnel's
                 fall --
                 Snakes that our masters shall scotch at down, as is written
                 here on the wall.

                 For the weeks of our waiting draw to a close. . . . There is
                 scarcely a leaf astir
                 In the garden beyond my windows, where the twilight shadows
                 blur
                 The blaze of some woman's roses. . . . "Bombardment orders,
                 sir."