Page:Canadian poems of the great war.djvu/183

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��Clive Phillipps-Wolley

The late Sir Clive Phillips-Wolley of Victoria, B.C. Author of Songs from a Young Man s Land, Sport in the Crimea and the Caucasus Savage Svanetia, Trotlings of a Tenderfoot, A Sportsman s Eden, Snap, Gold, Gold in Cariboo and several other volumes. Born in Wimborne, Dorsetshire, Hngland. Came to British Columbia in middle life, and lived there for nearly a quarter of a century.

MAPLE LEAVES

HERE S a wooden church in our farthest west,

A little lone frontier fold ; Round it the dead of our New World rest, On its door are the names of our boys, our best,

For God and their King enrolled.

We miss the fall of their swift young feet,

Our fields and our homes lie dumb, Though we go to the gate, there are none to meet, And sad is the prayer that our folk repeat :

Will they come, Lord ? When will they come ?

The fold is full of its fallen leaves,

Its trees stand naked and bare, The mother s heart for her dead boy grieves, None come back, though the last one leaves

But God HAS answered our prayer !

For the leaves which were green in the spring that s dead,

Blood-red when the year grew old, Now flutter down round the old man s head, Not splashed with scarlet or stained with red,

But gold of the dawn pure gold!

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