Page:More songs by the fighting men, soldier poets, second series, 1917.djvu/43

Leslie Coulson To take our fill of armoured crime,

To troop our banners, storm the gates.

Blood on the sword, our eyes blood-red,

Blind in our puny reign of power,

Do we forget how soon is sped

Our little hour?

Our little hour,—how soon it dies:

How short a time to tell our beads,

To chant our feeble Litanies,

To think sweet thoughts, to do good deeds.

The altar lights grow pale and dim,

The bells hang silent in the tower—

So passes with the dying hymn

Our little hour.

From the Somme

N other days I sang of simple things,

Of summer dawn, and summer noon and night,

The dewy grass, the dew-wet fairy rings,

The lark's long golden flight.

Deep in the forest I made melody

While squirrels cracked their hazel nuts on high,

Or I would cross the wet sand to the sea

And sing to sea and sky.

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