Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/225

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The touch and the tornado; all our guns give tongue together,

St. Barbara for the gunnery and God defend the right—

They are stopped and gapped and battered as we blast away the weather,

Building window upon window to our lady of the light;

For the light is come on Liberty, her foes are falling, falling,

They are reeling, they are running, as the shameful years have run,

She is risen for all the humble, she has heard the conquered calling,

St. Barbara of the Gunners, with her hand upon the gun.

They are burst asunder in the midst that eat of their own flatteries,

Whose lip is curled to order as its barbered hair is curled

—Blast of the beauty of sudden death, St. Barbara of the batteries

That blow the new white window in the wall of all the world.

For the hand is raised behind us, and the bolt smites hard,

Through the rending of the doorways, through the death-gap of the Guard,

For the shout of the Three Colours is in Condé and beyond,

And the Guard is flung for carrion in the graveyard of St. Gond;

Through Mondemont and out of it, through Morin marsh and on,

With earthquake of salutation the impossible thing is gone;

Gaul, charioted and charging, great Gaul upon a gun,

Tiptoe on all her thousand years, and trumpeting to the sun,

As day returns, as death returns, swung backward for a span,

Back on the barbarous reign returns the battering-ram of Man.