Page:Poems of the Great War - Cunliffe.djvu/155

 Oh, chide us not. Not ours the crime.

Oh, praise us not. It is not won, The fight which we shall make subUme

Beneath an unaccustomed sun.

The simple world of childhood fades Beyond the Styx that all have passed ;

This is a novel land of shades, ^^^le^ein no ancient glories last.

A land of desolation, blurred

By mists of penitence and woe, Wliere everv' hope must be deferred

And every river backward flow.

Not on this grey and ruined plain

Shall we obedient recall Your cities to rebuild again

For their inevitable fall.

We kneel at no ancestral shrine.

With admirable blasphemy We desecrate the old divine

And dream a new eternity.

Destroy the history of men,

The weary cycle of decay. We shall not pass that way again.

We tread a new untrodden way.

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