Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/415

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WENT upon a journey

To countries far away,

From province unto province

To pass my holiday.

And when I came to Serbia,

In a quiet little town

At an inn with a flower-filled garden

With a soldier I sat down.

Now he lies dead at Belgrade.

You heard the cannon roar!

It boomed from Rome to Stockholm,

It pealed to the far west shore.

And when I came to Russia,

A man with flowing hair

Called me his friend and showed me

A flowing river there.

Now he lies dead at Lemberg,

Beside another stream,

In his dark eyes extinguished

The friendship of his dream.

And then I crossed two countries

Whose names on my lips are sealed. ..

Not yet had they flung their challenge

Nor led upon the field

Sons who lie dead at Liège,

Dead by the Russian lance,

Dead in southern mountains,

Dead through the farms of France.

I stopped in the land of Louvain,

So tranquil, happy, then.

I lived with a good old woman,

With her sons and her grandchildren.