Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/116

 116 THE FIRST BATTLE OF YPRES

REY field of Flanders, grim old battle-plain,

What armies held the iron line round Ypres in the rain,

From Bixschoote to Baecelaere and down to the Lys river?

Merry men of England,

Men of the green shires,

From the winding waters,

The elm-trees and the spires,

And the lone village dreaming in the downland yonder.

Half a million Huns broke over them in thunder,

Roaring seas of Huns swept on and sunk again,

Where fought the men of England round Ypres in the rain,

On the grim plain of Flanders, whose earth is fed with slaughter.

North-country fighting men from the mine and the loom,

Highlander and lowlander stood up to death and doom,

From Bixschoote to Baecelaere and down to the Lys river.

London men and Irish,

Indian men and French,

Charging with the bayonet,

Firing in the trench,

Fought in that furious fight, shoulder to shoulder.

Leapt from their saddles to charge in fierce disorder,