Page:More songs by the fighting men, soldier poets, second series, 1917.djvu/81

Harold John Jarvis At a Wayside Shrine

HE column halts before a wayside shrine

To change formation into battle line

From double file. 'Tis even, and the sun

Its daily circling race has wellnigh done.

Behind me in the West, a dying glow

Of gold still gleams, to cast a pale halo

Upon the shrine.

How many men before

To-night have halted at this spot, and wore

The same grim, ready look that I see now

Painted on every face from chin to brow,

And in each eye? One and all are ready

For come what may; each man now stands steady

Waiting command.

And now the line will pass

The shrine—itself as steady as the mass

Of England's sons slow moving to the fray,

Their Destiny now in the hands of—say,

The dim Divinity within that shrine—

A loving God (the stricken Christ His sign

Of Love) or what?

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