Nor do I dream the pleasant days
That sometimes soothe the worst of wars,
Of omelettes and estaminets
And smiling maids at cottage-doors;
But in a vague unbounded waste
For ever hide with futile haste
From 5.9's precisely placed,
And all the time it pours.

Yet, if I showed colossal phlegm
Or kept enormous crowds at bay,
And sometimes won the D.C.M.,
It might inspire me for the fray;
But, looking back, I do not seem
To recollect a single dream
In which I did not simply scream
And try to run away.

And when I wake with flesh that creeps
The only solace I can see
Is thinking, if the Prussian sleeps,
What hideous visions _his_ must be!
Can all my dreams of gas and guns
Be half as rotten as the Hun's?
I like to think his blackest ones
Are when he dreams of me.

A.P.H.

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