Where I sit and tune my song,
In the valley all day long,
Ding-a-dong and ding-a-dong,
I hear the guns a-strafing –
And a bird of green and red,
In the branches o’er my head,
Keeps a-tapping, like the dead –
And like a ghost a-laughing –
Tap-a-tap and tap-a-tap,
Pecking wood devoid of sap,
Blasted by guns and mayhap,
Or dead and old and rotten –
Red and green and gold is he,
Tap-a-tapping ceaselessly,
But his laugh has little glee,
Aye, little mirth has gotten.
Pied with cowslips was the dell
Where the minnewerfers fell,
And the blackbird’s mellow throat
Rang as loud as any bell.
Frail anemones did sprout,
And a chaffinch sang as well,
And a bee who boomed about,
Seeking honey in the dell –
Ere the minnewerfers fell.
But the minnewerfers fell,
And the blackbird ceased his song,
And the place became a hell,
Rang with curses loud and long –
Blackbird, chaffinch, bumble-bee
Fled away upon the wing –
Where they sang so merrily
Other messengers now sing –
Bumble-bee is busy still,
Blackbird and the chaffinch sing
In another faery dell,
By the village on the hill;
But a devil out of hell,
Tossing high explosive shell,
Gambols in the flowery dell
Where the minnewerfers fell.
Minenwerfer is the German name for a class of short range mortars used extensively during the First World War by the German Army. They were intended to be used to clear obstacles like bunkers and barbed wire that longer range artillery was unable to accurately target.