Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/215

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He heard the glorious organ

Fill transept, loft, and nave.

He faintly heard the pulpit words:

"Himself He could not save."

And all the wires in No-man's-land

Seemed thrummed by ghostly thumbs;

There woke then such a harping

As when a hero comes,

As when a hero homeward comes—

And then his thought was back:

He leaned against the parapet

And peered into the black. William Rose Benet

HERE is a fold of lion-coloured earth,

With stony feet in the Ægean blue,

Whereon of old dwelt loneliness and dearth

Sun-scorched and desolate; and when there flew

The winds of winter in these dreary aisles

Of crag and cliff, a whirling snow-wreath bound

The foreheads of the mountains, and their miles

Of frowning precipice and scarp were wound

With stilly white, that peered through brooding mist profound.

But now the myrtle and the rosemary,

The mastic and the rue, the scented thyme

With fragrant fingers gladdening the grey,

Shall kindle on a desert grown sublime,

Henceforth that haggard land doth guard and hold

The treasure of a sovereign nation's womb—

Her fame, her worth, her pride, her purest gold.

Oh, call ye not the sleeping place a tomb

That lifts to heaven's light such everlasting bloom.