Page:Canadian poems of the great war.djvu/240

 Arthur Stringer

Proclaiming, through their clamour, Peace Where Peace no longer dwells.

Yet chime by chime, like homing birds,

They float, soar up, recede, A gust of old-time gladdening words

That back to Sorrow lead.

For as we listen, bell by bell,

They bring about us here Our ghostly dead who sleep so well

We dare not dream them near.

So be still blithe, O Bells, and gay, Since through the old glad sound

Our dead come home this Christmas Day From grave-strewn Flanders ground!

��F

��WAR

ROM hill to hill he harried me ;

He stalked me day and night; He neither knew nor hated me,

Nor his nor mine the fight.

He killed the man who stood by me,

For such they made his law; Then foot by foot I fought to him,

Who neither knew nor saw.

I trained my rifle on his heart;

He leapt up in the air. The screaming ball tore through his breast,

And lay embedded there.

Lay hot embedded there, and yet

Hissed home o er hill and sea Straight to the aching heart of one

Who d wronged not mine nor me.

�� �