Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DEAD MAN'S COTTAGE, by JAMES HARRY KNIGHT-ADKIN



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DEAD MAN'S COTTAGE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: A loft with a ruckle of twisted rafters where the blue sky shows through ...
Last Line: Stay.
Subject(s): Death; Soldiers' Writings; World War I; Dead, The; First World War


A LOFT with a ruckle of twisted rafters where the blue sky shows through the
splintered tiles,
A shattered floor and a mouldy blanket and little brass cases heaped in
piles—
Aloof from the toil and the stench of the trenches, marooned in an island of No

Man's Land,
Whipped into waves by the whirl of the shell-fire and foaming with poppies on
every hand:
Here is my post now from dawn till darkness, watching alone where my comrades
died
With a hermit's meal of meat and of water and Death for companion hard by my
side.
Death that I send, and death that seeks me, which is my foe and which is my
friend?
Here in the peace of Dead Man's Cottage the difference seems little enough in
the end.

Hark! Here it comes with a scream and a shrieking—like ghostly scissors
that rend the sky,
Launched ten miles back on a telephone's whisper to seek after those who are
next to die.
Foiled! Fallen short! but the earth is shaken with a belch of yellow, a burst of

flame,
And the bones of the half-buried dead are riven and tossed abroad in a ghastly
game.
Crack! There's my answer—behind that traverse a glimpse of a grey cap
barely seen,
An arm upflung, as the bullet reached him, in a clutch at the sandbag's
faithless screen.
He is one who was, and I to-morrow may leave the world that I love and know;
When Death the Adventurer calls me to follow, shall I be glad or sorry to go?

(A whirr and a buzzing, muffled, metallic—and sliding afar down the vault
of the sky
A plane in a cluster of thistle-head Archies, like the gaunt grey ghost of a
dragonfly)
Good Hunting, Brother! The barely breathed whisper just stirs the motes in the
sunlight beam,
And the ghosts of the dead in Dead Man's Cottage reply like the half-heard voice

of a dream.
Good Hunting! WE followed the trail before you, WE killed once or twice ere we

missed our spring,
We who have laid by our arms salute you who still press trigger to serve the
King.
Life is the best, for living is serving—be not too eager to hurry away;
Death is not hard, for the dead remember—be not too troubled or eager to
stay.





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