Page:Poems of the Great War - Cunliffe.djvu/111

 ��THE .MAX IX THE TREXCH

Can you not hear me, young man in the street ?

Is it nothing to you who pass by,

^\^lo down the dim-Ut ways in thousands roam ?

From here I watch you, through the driving sleet,

Under the evening sky,

Hurrs'ing home.

Home I — how the word sounds Hke a bell —

I wonder can you know, as I know well,

That in this trench

Of death and stench

I stand between your home and hell.

I am the roof that shields you from the weather, I am the gate that keeps the brigand back, When pillage, fire, and murder come together, I am the wall that saves your home from sack, ^lan I when you look upon the girl you prize. Can you imagine horror in those eyes ? You have not seen, you cannot understand, This trench is England, all this ruined land Is where you wander, street, or field, or strand. Save for God's grace, and for the guns that rest Upon this dripping mudbank of the west.

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