Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/248

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And round the city whose cathedral towers

The enemies of Beauty dared profane,

And in the mat of multicoloured flowers

That clothe the sunny chalk-fields of Champagne

Under the little crosses where they rise

The soldier rests. Now round him undismayed

The cannon thunders, and at night he lies

At peace beneath the eternal fusillade. ..

That other generations might possess—

From shame and menace free in years to come

A richer heritage of happiness,

He marched to that heroic martyrdom,

Esteeming less the forfeit that he paid

Than undishonoured that his flag might float

Over the towers of liberty, he made

His breast the bulwark and his blood the moat.

Obscurely sacrificed, his nameless tomb,

Bare of the sculptor's art, the poet's lines,

Summer shall flush with poppy-fields in bloom,

And Autumn yellow with maturing vines

There the grape-pickers at their harvesting

Shall lightly tread and load their wicker trays,

Blessing his memory as they toil and sing

In the slant sunshine of October days. ..

I love to think that if my blood should be

So privileged to sink where his has sunk,

I shall not pass from Earth entirely,

But when the banquet rings, when healths are drunk,

And faces that the joys of living fill

Glow radiant with laughter and good cheer,

In beaming cups some spark of me shall still

Brim toward the lips that once I held so dear.