Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/113

 YPRES

YPRES

ITY of stark desolation,

Infinite voices of silence,

Crying aloud in the day time,

Whispering shrill in the moonlight,

Ask of the world, appealing:

"What are you now but a name?"

Hushed are your streets, and the rumble

Of lorries and wagons and limbers

And low, dull tread of battalions,

Moving stubbornly cheerful

Back of invisible fighters

Muddily bedded in Flanders—

These alone for your roadways,

And these for the hours of darkness,

Wide to inscrutable heaven

Lie, in their ruin all equal,

Houses and hovels abandoned,

Windowiess yawnings and pillars,

Chasms and doorways and gables,

Tottering spectres of brickwork

Strewn through the naked chambers—

Never a home for the seeking,