Page:Canadian poems of the great war.djvu/227

 Virna Sheard

Fold them at dawn, dear earth, within your arms So safe and strong:

Hold them asleep till they forget alarms, And woe and wrong.

Master of Kings ! If peace be bought with pain These paid the price ;

O show Thy tortured world that not in vain Is sacrifice!

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��YESTERDAY

E are forgetting all the old grey saints,

A bloom of dust lies on the martyrs shrines; From storied windows that the sunlight paints, We rarely read the dear familiar lines ;

They seem a part of things so far away, These haloed ones the saints of yesterday.

We are forgetting all the ancient lore

Of time-dimmed battles, with their unnamed dead; All, all have vanished we shall nevermore

In dreams unfurl their banners, stained with red ; A tidal- wave has drifted them away Into the limbo of Life s yesterday.

We are forgetting all the mighty men :

The knights in clanking armour of the past ; We care not that by forest and by fen, Their fighting done, they soundly slept at last; They all belong to grief so far away, The long and bitter tears of yesterday.

We are forgetting all the hours of peace,

The sweet sun-sprinkled hours of gold on green, The careless hours we thought could never cease, The merriest hours the world has ever seen. They are so very, very far away, Those white untroubled hours of yesterday.

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