Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/84

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SHARDS of walls that once held precious life,

Now scattered, like the bones the Prophet saw

Lying in visioned valley of the slain

Ere One cried: "Son of Man, can these bones live?"

O images of heroes, saints, and Christs,

Pierced, broken, thrust in hurried sepulture

In selfsame tombs with tinsel, dross, and dreg,

And without time for either shrift or shroud!

O smold'ring embers of Love's hearthstone fires,

Quenched by the fiercer fires of hellish hate,

That have not where to kindle flames again

To light succeeding generations on!

O ghost-grey ashes of cathedral towers

That toward the sky once raised appealing hands

To beg the God of all take residence

And hold communion with the kneeling souls!

O silent tongues of bells that once did ring

Matin and Angelus o'er peaceful fields,

Now shapeless slag that will to-morrow serve

To make new engines for still others' woe!

O dust that flowered in finial and foil

And bright in many-petaled windows bloomed,

Now unto dust returned at cannon's breath

To lay thy faded glories on the crypt!

O wounded cities that have been beloved

As Priam's city was by Hecuba,—

Sad Hecuba, who ere in exile borne,

Beheld her Hector's child Astyanax