Page:Canadian poems of the great war.djvu/225

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��Virna Sheard CROSSES

LL your broken war-spent heroes,

Lord of War and Grief, you pay

With a cross of moulded iron,

Hard-wrought iron cold and grey!

On the Somme you grant five thousand

And five thousand at Verdun;

At the dawn of day you count them

And at setting of the sun.

On the trampled fields of Flanders,

On the bitter roads of France,

Where the big guns chant their war-songs,

And the crimson death-lights dance,

There you count the iron crosses

Of such high and far renown,

Grim and grey the men who win them ;

Theirs the cross and yours the crown. ..

But the little wooden crosses You have given the peaceful dead O the little wooden crosses, By each young low-lying head, Though the tender grasses hide them Or they fall beneath the snows, Not a cross shall be forgotten; God Himself has counted those!

��THE SEA

HE sea is just a cradle wide and deep, A cradle that the moon rocks to and fro ;

What peace they find who there fall fast asleep, What lovely dreams tis not for us to know.

But God hath sent the angel of the sea To sing to them an endless lullaby ;

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