Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/216

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They stretch, now high, now low the little scars

Upon the rugged pelt of herb and stone;

Above them sparkle bells and buds and stars

Young spring hath from her emerald kirtle thrown.

Asphodel, crocus and anemone

With silver, azure, crimson once again

Ray all that earth, and from the murmuring sea

Come winds to flash the leaves on shore and plain

Where evermore our dead—our radiant dead shall reign.

Imperishable as the mountain height

That marks their place afar, their numbers shine,

Who, with the first-fruits of a joyful might,

To human liberty another shrine

Here sanctified; nor vainly have they sped

That made this desert dearer far than home,

And left one sanctuary more to tread

For England, whose memorial pathways roam

Beside her hero sons, beneath the field and foam. Eden Phillpotts

THE LAST RALLY (Under England's supplementary Conscription Act, the last of the married men joined her colours on June 24, 1916.)

N the midnight, in the rain,

That drenches every sooty roof and licks each window-pane,

The bugles blow for the last rally

Once again.

Through the horror of the night,

Where glimmers yet northwestward one ghostly strip of white,

Squelching with heavy boots through the untrodden ploughlands,

The troops set out. Eyes right!