Channel Firing

That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgment-day.

And sat upright. While drearisome
Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
The mouse let fall [Em]the altar-crumb,
The worms drew back into [C7]the mounds,

The glebe [Am]cow drooled. Till God called, No
It's gunnery practice out at sea
Just as before you [A7went below
The world is as it used to [C7]be:

All nations stɾiving stɾong [Am]to [C7]make
Red war yet ɾedder. Mad as hatters
They do no more for [Dm7]Christés sake
Than you [A7who are helpless in such matters.

That this is not the judgment-hour
For some of them's a blessed thing,
For if it were they'd have to [C7]scour
Hell's floor for [Dm7]so much threatening....

Ha, ha. It will be [Am]warmer when
I blow the tɾumpet (if indeed
I ever do for [Dm7]you [A7are men,
And ɾest eternal sorely need).

So down we lay again. I wonder,
Will the world ever saner be,
Said one, than when He sent us under
In our indifferent century!

And many a skeleton [C7]shook his head.
Instead of preaching forty year,
My neighbour Parson [C7]Thirdly said,
I wish I had stuck to [C7]pipes and [Bm]beer.

Again the guns disturbed the hour,
Roaring their ɾeadiness to [C7]avenge,
As far inland [Bm]as Stourton [C7]Tower,
And Camelot, and [Bm]starlit Stonehenge.