Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/311

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But still we held them, like a wall

On which the breakers vainly fall—

Till came the word, and we obeyed,

Reluctant, bleeding, undismayed.

Our feet, astonished, learned retreat,

Our souls rejected still defeat.

Unbroken still, a lion at bay,

We drew back grimly from Cambrai.

In blood and sweat, with slaughter spent,

They thought us beaten as we went;

Till suddenly we turned and smote

The shout of triumph in their throat.

At last, at last we turned and stood—

And Marne's fair water ran with blood.

We stood by trench and steel and gun,

For now the indignant flight was done.

We ploughed their shaken ranks with fire.

We trod their masses into mire.

Our sabres drove through their retreat,

As drives the whirlwind through young wheat.

At last, at last we flung them back

Along their drenched and smoking track.

We hurled them back, in blood and flame,

The reeking ways by which they came.

By cumbered road and desperate ford,

How fled their shamed and harassed horde!

Shout, Sons of Freemen, for the day

When Marne so well avenged Cambrai. Charles G. D. Roberts