Channel Firing

That night your great guns, unawares, 

Shook all our coffins as we lay, 

And broke the chancel window-squares, 

We thought it was the Judgement-day 

And sat upright,  While drearisome 

Arose the howl of wakened hounds: 

The mouse let fall the altar-crumb, 

The worm drew back into the mounds, 

The glebe cow drooled. Till God cried, 

"No; It's gunnery practice out at sea 

Just as before you went below; 

The world is as it used to be: 

"All nations striving strong to make 

Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters 

They do no more for Christés sake 

Than you who are helpless in such matters.

"That this is not the judgment-hour 

For some of them's a blessed thing, 

For if it were they'd have to scour 

Hell's floor for so much threatening. . . . 

"Ha, ha. It will be warmer when 

I blow the trumpet (if indeed 

I ever do; for you are men, 

And rest eternal sorely need)." 

So down we lay again. "I wonder, 

Will the world ever saner be," 

Said one, "than when He sent us under 

In our indifferent century!" 

And many a skeleton shook his head. 

"Instead of preaching forty year," 

My neighbour Parson Thirdly said, 

"I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer." 

Again the guns disturbed the hour, 

Roaring their readiness to avenge, 

As far inland as Stourton Tower, 

And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge. 

-o0o-