Month unto month we dwell 'neath sodden clay,
Where rain and ruin share the soldier’s bed;
The sun, a ghost, peers faintly through the grey,
And hope walks softly, lest it wake the dead.

The rats, our rivals for the crust and sheet,
Make banquet of the brave who sleep too still.
Yet we find jest where filth and sorrow meet,
And laughter blooms beside the bitter pill.

A letter home, a pipe, a comrade's song,
The clink of tin, the stutter of distant guns—
These forge our souls to suffer grim and long,
While war grinds youth beneath its iron runs.

No saint are we, but men who would not break,
Who found their strength for one more dawn to wake.