Ah, happy days in deep well-ordered alleys,
Where, after dining, probably with wine,
One felt indifferent to hostile sallies,
And with a pipe meandered round the line;
You trudged along a trench until it ended;
It led at least to some familiar spot;
It might not be the place that you'd intended,
But then you might as well be there as not.
But what a wilderness we now inhabit
Since this confounded "open" strife prevails!
It may be good; I do not wish to crab it,
But you should hear the language it entails,
Should see this waste of wide uncharted craters
Where it is vain to seek the companies,
Seeing the shell-holes are as like as taters
And no one knows where anybody is.
Oft in the darkness, palpitant and blowing,
Have I set out and lost the hang of things,
And ever thought, "Where _can_ the guide be going?"
But trusted long and rambled on in rings,
For ever climbing up some miry summit,
And halting there to curse the contrite guide,
For ever then descending like a plummet
Into a chasm on the other side.
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