Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/267

 Rh

O my brave brown companions, when your souls

Flock silently away, and the eyeless dead

Shame the wild beast of battle on the ridge,

Death will stand grieving in that field of war

Since your unvanquished hardihood is spent,

And through some mooned Valhalla there will pass

Battalions and battalions, scared from hell;

The unreturning army that was youth;

The legions who have suffered and are dust. Siegfried Sassoon

HE magpies in Picardy

Are more than I can tell.

They flicker down the dusty roads

And cast a magic spell

On the men who march through Picardy,

Through Picardy to hell.