Shell-Shock In Arras

All night they crooned high overhead

As the skies are over men:

I lay and smiled in my cellar bed,

And went to sleep again.

All day they whistled like a lash

That cracked in the trembling town:

I stood and listened for the crash

Of houses thundering down.

In, in they came, three nights and days,

All night and all day long;

It made us learned in their ways

And experts on their song.

Like a noisy clock, or a steamer's screw,

Their beat debauched the ear,

And left it dead to a deafening few

That burst who cared how near?

We only laughed when the flimsy floor

Heaved on the shuddering sod:

But when some idiot slammed a door--

My God!