Page:Canadian poems of the great war.djvu/124

 Wilson MacDonald

You have cheered the line of khaki swinging grandly down the street,

But you quite forgot to cheer another line ; [their feet, They are plodding sadly homeward, with no music for

To a far more lonely river than the Rhine. Ah ! the battlefield is wider than the cannon s sullen roar,

And the women weep o er battles lost or won; [door For the man a cross of honour, but the crepe upon the

For the Girl behind the Man behind the Gun.

When the heroes are returning and the world with flags is red,

When you show the tattered trophies of the war, When your cheers are for the living, and your tears are for the dead

Which the foemen in the battle trampled o er, [array When you fling your reddest roses at the horsemen in

With their helmets flaming proudly in the sun, [spray I would bid you wear the favour of an apple-blossom

For the Girl behind the Man behind the Gun.

��M

��FRANCE

Y keart goes out to France, the Queen in war, In tournament and love; the gay, the brave: To that young, blue-eyed Breton who would save

A dance for Death or for his Belle Aurore:

Who keeps so purely in his heart the lore Of love and honour, while the tyrant guns Spume at his wisp of flesh their flaring tons,

White hot from maddened ages gone before.

The world s barometer is in that lad That Breton peasant against whom is hurled The wild, down leaping chariot of Mars.

When France is laughing all the earth is glad; And when she weeps the windows of the world Are darkened to the sun and to the stars.

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