Page:Armistice Day.djvu/138

116 Here Notre Dame, rare symphony in stone,

Utters a silence more divine than song;

And a mass is going forward in the dim heart of the Madeleine,

Lo, the bowed benches; and the stout magnificent beadle asleep in his chair!

In the mists of Paris, where the faces of a hundred peoples melt and merge,

Are soldiers come from battle, and a slow colorable whirl of uniforms,

And quiet funerals spinning black threads through the brilliant boulevards.

V

I look to the North; past the Forest of Compiègne where the pen

Has scratched the paper...

There's a jagged wall,

Making a grim, dark pattern on the sky—

Ypres...which was once a city!

Now behold,

These crosses marching to the horizon—

These graves, like the stilled surges of an ocean dead of grief!

And every mound a nameless Calvary!

O grateful years,

Let Belgium evermore be Britain's monument!