OFF DUTY

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2740, 7 April 1916, Page 5

OFF DUTY

(By Patrick Mac Gill.) The night is full of magic, and the moonlit dewdrops glisten Where the blossoms close in slumber and the questing bullets pass— Where the bullets hit the level I can hear tbem as I listen, Like a little cricket-concert, chirping chorus in the grass. In the dugout by the traverse there's a candle-flame a-winking, And the fireflies on the ._ sand-bags hnyo their torches all aflame. As -I watched them in the moonlight, suro I cannot help but thinking That the world I knew and -this one' carry on the very same. Look! A gun goes'flash to eastward! "Cover, matey! Under cover! Don't you know the flash of dancer? Ah! You know the signal well; You can hear it coming, coming. There it passes; swooping over — There's a threat of desolation in the passing of a shell." Little snears of grass are waving, deckled witli jewels iridescent— Hark! A man on watch is stricken— I can hear his dying moan — Lies a road across the starland near the wan and waning crescent, WWe a sentinel off duty goes to reach his Maker's ThroneT