Page:Canadian poems of the great war.djvu/247

 o

��Bernard Freeman Trotter

In useless impotence, while the red torrent runs

In glorious spate for Liberty and Right!

Oh, to have died that day at Langemarck!

In one fierce moment to have paid it all-

The debt of life to Earth, and Hell, and Heaven !

To have perished nobly in a noble cause!

Untarnished, unpolluted, undismayed,

By the dank world s corruption, to have passed,

A flaming beacon-light to gods and men !

For in the years to come it shall be told

How these laid down their lives, not for their homes,

Their orchards, fields and cities : They were driven

To slaughter by no tyrant s lust for power ;

Of their free manhood s choice they crossed the sea

To save a stricken people from its foe.

They died for Justice Justice owes them this :

That what they died for be not overthrown.

Peace. . Peace. . not thus may I find peace :

Like a caged leopard chafing at its bars

In ineffectual movement, this clogged spirit

Must pad its life out, an unwilling drone,

In safety and in comfort ; at the best

Achieving patience in the gods despite

And at the worst somehow the debt is paid.

THE POPLARS

A LUSH green English meadow it s there that I would

lie

A skylark singing overhead, scarce present to the eye, And a row of wind-blown poplars against an English

sky.

The elm is aspiration, and death is in the yew, And beauty dwells in every tree from Lapland to Peru ; But there s magic in the poplars when the wind goes through.

�� �