Page:Canadian poems of the great war.djvu/36

Louise Morey Bowman "Fred writes, You taught us to follow the gleam With gay old Galahad there on our wall. Cheer up, Mother. This life's not all.' Think of Fred—'our Joker'—writing that. Well, We must go down to lunch, Dear. There's the bell."

And so we silently closed the door,
 * And left the room as it was before,

With the sunshine spattering over the floor In a frolic of golden rain, And the little green leaves a-whispering And tapping outside the pane.

But now when we talk of the war, I see Above the horrible, death-filled gloom That rises before, 'the boys old room'— A vision whose beauty shall never pale; A temple—that still guards the Holy Grail.

ILL the sea-girt Island blossom his springtime? (England! Our England!) God made posies before He made people! Even before you had one church-steeple Primroses strewed you with pale-hued gold, Springing up from the ancient mould; King-cups glowed in your lush green meadows; Bluebells gleamed in your dusky woods. Ay! Old battlefields bloom in an English Maytime, (England! Our England!)

Primroses, cowslips, Violets, bluebells, Hawthorn, heather and broom, Send the word to the reeking trenches (Into the horror and smoke and stenches) Of England's posies abloom!