Page:Canadian poems of the great war.djvu/249

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��Bernard Freeman Trotter

A wooden bridge and a mill-wheel turning,

And a little stream that sports and brawls

Into the valley and far away:

Heigh! and ho! for an April day!

Children and old men stop to stare

At the clattering horsemen from Angleterre,

As we go riding through Picardy.

On by the unkempt hedges, budding,

On by the Chateau gates flung wide. Where is the man who should trim the garden?

Where are the youths of this country-side? Over the hills and far away Is war, red war, this April day.

So for the moment we pay our debt

To the cause on which our faith is set, As we go riding through Picardy.

Then the hiss of the spurting gravel,

Then the tang of the wind on the face, Then the splash of the hoof-deep puddle,

Spirit of April setting the pace Over the hills and far away : Heigh ! and ho ! for an April day !

Heigh! for a ringing: Ride tr-r oil

Ho ! of war we ve never a thought As we go riding through Picardy.

ICI REPOSE

His last poem, the manuscript of which reached his parents the day after he was killed.

LITTLE cross of weather-silvered wood, Hung with a garish wreath of tinselled wire, And on it carved a legend thus it runs : Ici repose Add what name you will, And multiply by thousands : in the fields,

Along the roads, beneath the trees one here, A dozen there, to each its simple tale

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