Page:Marlborough and other poems, Sorley, 1919.djvu/25

 Their field of life was white with stones;

Good fruit to earth they never brought.

O, in these bleached and buried bones

Was neither love nor faith nor thought.

But like the wind in this bleak place,

Bitter and bleak and sharp they grew,

And bitterly they ran their race,

A brutal, bad, unkindly crew:

Souls like the dry earth, hearts like stone,

Brains like that barren bramble-tree:

Stern, sterile, senseless, mute, unknown—

But bold, O, bolder far than we!

14 July 1913 7