Am Em F#m Em
Am Em F#m Em


[Verse 1]
Em
I've tinkered at my bits of rhymes
Em
In weary, woeful, waiting times;
Em
And doleful hours of battle-din
Em
Ere yet they brought the wounded in;
Em
Through vigils of the fateful nights
Em
In lousy barns by candle-light;
Em
And dug-outs, sagging and aflood,
Em
On stretchers stiff and bleared with blood;
Em
By ragged grove, by ruined road,
Em
By hearths accursed where love abode,
Em
By broken altars, blackened shrines
Fm
I've tinkered at my bits of rhymes.


[Verse 2]
Fm
I've solaced me with scraps of song
Fm
The desolated ways along:
Fm
Through sickly fields all shrapnel-sown,
Fm
And meadows reaped by death alone;
Fm
By blazing cross and splintered spire,
Fm
By headless Virgin in the mire;
Fm
By gardens gashed amid their bloom,
Fm
By guttered grave, by shattered tomb;
Fm
Beside the dying and the dead,
Fm
Where rocket green and rocket red
Fm
In trembling pools of poising light,
Fm
With flowers of flame festoon the night.
Fm
Ah me! by what dark ways of wrong
Gm
I've cheered my heart with scraps of song.


[Verse 3]
Gm
So here's my sheaf of war-won verse,
Gm
And some is bad, and some is worse.
Gm
And if at times I curse a bit,
Gm
You needn't read that part of it;
Gm
For through it all like horror runs
Gm
The red resentment of the guns.
Gm
And you yourself would mutter when
Gm
You took the things that once were men
Gm
And sped them through that zone of hate
Gm
To where the dripping surgeons wait;
Gm
And wonder too if in God's sight
Am
War ever, ever, can be right.


[Verse 4]
Am
Yet may it not be, crime and war
Am
But efforts misdirected are.
Am
And if there's good in war and crime
Am
There may be in my bits of rhyme,
Am
My songs from out the slaughter mill:
Am
So take or leave them as you will.