C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (1878–1962)

THE NIGHT I left my father said:

“You’ll go and do some stupid thing.

You’ve no more sense in that fat head

Than Silly Billy Witterling.

“Not sense to come in when it rains—

Not sense enough for that, you’ve got.

You’ll get a bullet through your brains,

Before you know, as like as not.”

And now I’m lying in the trench

And shells and bullets through the night

Are raining in a steady drench,

I’m thinking the old man was right.