Explore "The Guns" by Frederic Manning on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Menace, hidden, but pulsing in the air of night: / Then a throbbing thunder, split and seared / With the scarlet flashes of innumerable shells, / And against it, suddenly, a shell, closer; / A purr that changes to a whine / Like a beast of prey that has missed its kill, / And again, closer.
But even in the thunder of the guns / There is a silence: and the soul groweth still.
Yea, it is cloaked in stillness: / And it is not fear.
But the torn and screaming air / Trembles under the onset of warring angels / With terrible and beautiful faces; / And the soul is stilled, knowing these awful shapes, / That burden the night with oppression, / To be but the creatures of its own lusts.