Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/121

 Rh

They wear clean cap and tunic,

As when they went to war;

A gleam comes where the medal's pinned:

But they will fight no more.

The shadows, maimed and antic,

Gesture and shape distort,

Like mockery of a demon dumb,

Out of the hell-din whence they come,

That dogs them for his sport:

But as if dead men were risen

And stood before me there

With a terrible fame about them blown

In beams of spectral air,

I see them, men transfigured

As in a dream, dilate

Fabulous with the Titan-throb

Of battling Europe's fate;

For history's hushed before them,

And legend flames afresh,—

Verdun, the name of thunder,

Is written on their flesh. Laurence Binyon

VERDUN

HREE hundred thousand men, but not enough

To break this township on a winding stream;

More yet must fall, and more, ere the red stuff

That built a nation's manhood may redeem

The Master's hopes and realize his dream.

They pave the way to Verdun; on their dust

The Hohenzollerns mount and, hand in hand,

Gaze haggard south; for yet another thrust

And higher hills must heap, ere they may stand

To feed their eyes upon the promised land.