SOMEWHERE ON LEAVE

Unfurrowed field and lonely plow, The laughing lad has fled, Sweet-throated, unaccompanied lark, The laughing lad is dead. I found him on a barren tract, Stretched out and lying still, And on his lips the blood had dried, And on the blasted hill. Oh, that was far from hills like these, A hundred thousand guns Are booming, bursting in his ears And he does not hear a one. A soldier’s thoughts and a soldier’s laugh And a soldier’s boyish grin Are dead on a lonely battlefield, And the war is yet to win.