Page:More songs by the fighting men, soldier poets, second series, 1917.djvu/26

More Songs by the Fighting Men Wanders the spirit of death;

And e'en in the burning noon is an icy breath

And the red of the west is to me like the redness of blood.

The village is still as the heat,

From the ruined houses start

The rats across the street.—

There is never another sound,

For the guns are silent to-day,

And the endless lines of men that are bound

For the place of death and the nameless mound

Have taken another way.

At the end of the ruined street

Roodless the church yet stands

To the God men praise with their lips

While they mock Him with their hands;

With hands that have scrawled for sport

Their jests on the altar-stone,

And their ribald words on the lips of Christ,

The marred Christ hanging alone.

Who has measured pain,

And who has a plumb for that sea

Where the soul shall know again

Its own immensity? 22