THERE'S your mask, Sir! No time to lose!" Ugh, what a gallows shape! Partly white cap, and partly noose! Somebody ties the tape. Goggles of sorts, it seems, inset: Cock them over the parapet, Study the battlescape. ENSIGN JOY'S in the second line-- And more than a bit cut off; A furlong or so down a green incline The fire-trench curls in the trough. Joy cannot see it--it's in the bed Of a river of poison that brims instead. He can only hear--a cough! NOTHING to do for the Companies there-- Nothing but waiting now, While the Gas rolls up on the balmy air, And a small bird cheeps on a bough. All of a sudden the sky seems full Of trusses of lighted cotton-wool And the enemy's big bow- wow! THE firmament cracks with his airy mines, And an interlacing hail Threshes the clover between our lines, As a vile invisible flail. And the trench has become a mighty vice That holds us, in skins of molten ice, For the vapors that fringe the veil. IT'S coming--in billowy swirls --as smoke From the roof a world on fire. It--comes! And a lad with a heart of oak Knows only that heart's de- sire! His masked lips whimper but one dear name-- And so is he lost to inward shame That he thrills at the word: "_Re-tire!_" WHOSE is the order, thrice renewed? Ensign Joy cannot tell : Only, that way lies Ermyntrude, And the other way this hell! Three men leap from the pois- oned fosse, Three men plunge from the para- dos, And--their--officer--as well! NOW, as he flies at their fly- ing heels, He awakes to his deep dis- grace, But the yawning pit of his shame reveals