Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/65

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Yea, stubborn, they stood, that hero band,

Where no soul hoped to live;

For five 'gainst eighty thousand men,

Were hopeless odds to give.

Yea, fought they on! 'Twas Friday eve,

When that demon gas drove down;

'Twas Saturday eve that saw them still

Grimly holding their own;

Sunday, Monday, saw them yet,

A steadily lessening band,

With, "no surrender" in their hearts,

But the dream of a far-off land,

Where mother and sister and love would weep

For the hushed heart lying still;—

But never a thought but to do their part,

And work the Empire's will.

Ringed round, hemmed in, and back to back,

They fought there under the dark,

And won for Empire, God and Right,

At grim, red Langemarck.

Wonderful battles have shaken this world,

Since the Dawn-God overthrew Dis;

Wonderful struggles of right against wrong,

Sung in the rhymes of the world's great song,

But never a greater than this.

Bannockburn, Inkerman, Balaclava,

Marathon's godlike stand;

But never a more heroic deed,

And never a greater warrior breed,

In any war-man's land.

This is the ballad of Langemarck,

A story of glory and might;

Of the vast Hun horde, and Canada's part

In the great, grim fight. Wilfred Campbell