against strong light. By stooping or lying down one partly inverts the eye, reverses the retinal segments and brings the fresh, unsated part of the eyeground against the bright sunset colors. The familiar but fascinating result is that the sky colors appear brighter, more varied, and more beautiful. This result is so easily verifiable and so interestingly parallel to the experience described in 'Twenty Minutes of Reality' that I want to analyze it further. No one questions that the greater beauty appreciated by the fresh half of the retina is reality and not delusion or morbidness. The unsated tissues give us true sight of the colors show us subtler and more delicate hues, unperceived by the work-a-day vision. Ordinary perception is untrue, because it has become blinded by overuse. It is calloused and numb. It misses the fine points. But when (by standing on our heads or approaching that attitude in more comfortable ways) we suddenly see things afresh- the new truth is beautiful truth. It is not merely strange or bizarre. The familiar cloud-masses and glowing horizon are there, but enhanced; not deformed, but fulfilled. All this seems to me strikingly parallel to the Twenty Minutes.' Familiar and unshaken, yet glorified - such was the new aspect of things. Such it is when the fresher healthier strip of retina gets a chance to mirror the truth. A keener delight in perception is notoriously a mark of health. It is to the healthy palate that food tastes wonderfully good. It is the diseased organism that finds no savor. To me therefore there are signs of unusual health in the type of perception which this convalescent reports. He describes the activity characteristic of sound senses, refreshed by rest and reinvigorated by the shock of a return from prison conditions to more normal life. But the essay reminds me not only of the glories of standing on one's head but of the glories of childhood. The glittering new painted universe which was enjoyed for those "Twenty Minutes' is after all a very familiar one. It is simply the world of our unsated, unsophisticated childhood — the Golden Age of Kenneth Grahame and Stevenson. Now I do not for a moment assert that children are always closer to truth than adults, but I do assert without fear of contradiction that they are healthier than adults. In their daily output of energy, in their muscular control and coördination through the larger movements of trunk and limb, wherein consists the beauty and the security of motion, children are vastly our superiors. In the soundness of their sleep, in their power to survive infectious disease they leave adults far in the rear. There is no doubt, then, that childhood is the acme of physical health. There is also, I think, no doubt that in the 'Twenty Minutes' which I am examining, a child's type of perception is recorded. If it was the child's type, it was probably an unusually healthy type. No evidence of morbidity appears from this point of view. Deserting now the medical standpoint, I want to suggest in closing that our ordinary prosaic perceptions show strong evidence of morbidity. The familiar pictures on our walls are all but invisible to most of us. Shall we pride ourselves on this sort of blindness? It means falsity, not fact. The blindness, to be sure, is in our brains, not in our eyes. It is not incurable. The powers are not atrophied - they are merely in abeyance. Yet while they are thus off duty we are almost as bad as blind. Familiarity breeds not so much contempt as callousness. Satiety is our average or 'normal' state about much of our experience in adult life; and satiety is demonstrably untrue, unscientific, maimed in short, diseased. To THE hot wax drips from the flares On the scrawled pink forms that litter The bench where he sits; the glitter Of stars is framed by the sand-bags atop of the dug-out stairs. And the lagging watch-hands creep, And his cloaked mates murmur in sleep — Forms he can wake with a kick – And he hears, as he plays with the pressel-switch, the strapped receiver click On his ear that listens, listens; And the candle-flicker glistens On the rounded brass of the switch-board where the red wires cluster thick. Wires from the earth, from the air; Wires that whisper and chatter At night, when the trench-rats patter And nibble among the rations and scuttle back to their lair; Wires that are never at rest For the linesmen tap them and test, And ever they tremble with tone: And he knows from a hundred signals the buzzing call of his own, The breaks and the vibrant stresses, The Z, and the G, and the Esses, That call his hand to the answering key and his mouth to the microphone. For always the laid guns fret On the words that his mouth shall utter, When rifle and maxim stutter And the rockets volley to starward from the spurting parapet; From the bombed and the battered trenches where the wounded moan in the mire, For a sign to waken the thunder Which shatters the night asunder With the flash of the leaping muzzles and the beat of battery-fire. AMMUNITION COLUMN I am only a cog in a giant machine, a link of an endless chain: And the rounds are drawn, and the rounds are fired, and the empties return again; Railroad, lorry and limber, battery, column and park ; To the shelf where the set fuse waits the breech, from the quay where the shells em bark We have watered and fed, and eaten our beef; the long dull day drags by, Puff and flash on the far-off blue round the speck one guesses the plane - I am only a cog in a giant machine, a little link in the chain, To the loader kneeling 'twixt trail and wheel from the shops where the steam-lathes run There's a lone mule braying against the line where the mud cakes fetlock-deep! There's a lone soul humming a hint of a song in the barn where the drivers sleep; And I hear the plash of the orderly's horse as he canters him down the lane Another cog in the gun-machine, a link in the selfsame chain. I am only a cog in a giant machine, but a vital link in the chain; THE VOICE OF THE GUNS We are the guns, and your masters! Saw ye our flashes? Heard ye the scream of our shells in the night, and the shuddering crashes? Saw ye our work by the roadside, the gray wounded lying, Moaning to God that he made them - the maimed and the dying: Husbands or sons, Fathers or lovers, we break them! We are the guns! We are the guns and ye serve us! Dare ye grow weary, Steadfast at night-time, at noon-time; or waking, when dawn winds blow dreary Over the fields and the flats and the reeds of the barrier water, To wait on the hour of our choosing, the minute decided for slaughter? Swift the clock runs; Yes, to the ultimate second. Stand to your guns! We are the guns and we need you! Here in the timbered Pits that are screened by the crest and the copse where at dusk ye unlimbered, Pits that one found us and finding, gave life (Did he flinch from the giving?); Labored by moonlight when wraith of the dead brooded yet o'er the living, Ere, with the sun's Rising the sorrowful spirit abandoned its guns. Who but the guns shall avenge him? Strip us for action! Load us and lay to the centremost hair of the dial-sight's refraction! Set your quick hands to our levers to compass the sped soul's assoiling; Brace your taut limbs to the shock when the thrust of the barrel recoiling Deafens and stuns! Vengeance is ours for our servants! Trust ye the guns! Least of our bond-slaves or greatest, grudge ye the burden? Hard is this service of ours which has only our service for guerdon: Grow the limbs lax, and unsteady the hands, which aforetime we trusted; Flawed, the clear crystal of sight; and the clean steel of hardihood rusted? Dominant ones, Ye are the guns! Are we worthy? Shall not these speak for us, Out of the woods where the torn trees are slashed with the vain bolts that seek for us, Thunder of batteries firing in unison, swish of shell flighting, Hissing that rushes to silence and breaks to the thud of alighting ; Death that outruns Horseman and foot? Are we justified? Answer, O guns! Yea! by your works are ye justified - toil unrelieved; Manifold labors, coördinate each to the sending achieved; Discipline, not of the feet but the soul, unremitting, unfeigned; Tortures unholy by flame and by maiming, known, faced, and disdained; Only foolhardiness; even by these are ye worthy your guns! Wherefore, and unto ye only-power has been given; Yea! - beyond man, over men, over desolate cities and riven; Yea! beyond space, over earth and the seas and the skies' high dominions; Yea! beyond time, over Hell and the fiends and the Death-angel's pinions! Vigilant ones, Loose them, and shatter, and spare not! We are the guns! |