Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/226

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While that the east held hard and hot like pincers in a forge,

Came like the west wind roaring up the Cannon of St. George,

Where the hunt is up and racing over stream and swamp and tarn,

And their batteries, black with battle, hold the bridge-heads of the Marne;

And across the carnage of the Guard by Paris in the plain

The Normans to the Bretons cried; and the Bretons cheered again;

But he that told the tale went home to his house beside the sea

And burned before St. Barbara, the light of the windows three.

Three candles for an unknown thing, never to come again,

That opened like the eye of God on Paris in the plain. Gilbert Keith Chesterton

UT here the dogs of war run loose,

Their whipper-in is Death;

Across the spoilt and battered fields

We hear their sobbing breath.

The fields where grew the living corn

Are heavy with our dead;

Yet still the fields at home are green

And I have heard it said:

That—

There are crocuses at Nottingham!

Wild crocuses at Nottingham!

Blue crocuses at Nottingham!

Though here the grass is red.

There are little girls at Nottingham

Who do not dread the Boche,

Young girls at school at Nottingham

(Lord! how I need a wash!).