Then do I turn, and hurry swiftly back Towards my home. I gladly leave that place behind! No more I hear the shrapnel's crack-- No more my eyes the searchlights blind. I cross the lines with lightening breast And sail into the friendly West. How glad am I to hurry swiftly back Towards my peaceful home! I reach the field--and then I softly land. My work is o'er! I leave my hot and panting steed, And clasp a comrade's outstretched hand, And with him to my bedroom speed. Then, over steaming beakers set, The night's fierce menace soon forget. How great a welcome waits me when I land-- When all my work is o'er! But ere I search shy sleep on my white bed I greet the dawn, And think, with heart weighed down with grief, How cruel this dawn to those whose dead Lie shattered, torn--whom, like a thief At darkest midnight, I have slain. Poor, unknown victims!--real my pain! What widows, orphans, sweethearts see their dead This cruel, hopeless dawn? _France, 1917._ _Despair_ The long and tedious months move slowly by And February's chill has fled away Before the gales of March, and now e'en they Have died upon the peaceful April sky: And still I sadly wander, still I sigh, And all the splendour of each Springtime day Is dyed, for me, one melancholy grey, And all its beauty can but make me cry. For thou art silent, Oh! far distant friend, And not one word has come to cheer my heart Through these sad months, which seem to have no end, So distant seems the day which bade us part! Oh speak! dear fair-haired angel! Spring has smiled, And I despair--a broken-hearted child. FRANCE, 1917. _The Horrors of Flying_