Page:Poems of the Great War - Cunliffe.djvu/168

 142 REGINALD WRIGHT KAUFFMAN

��THE NATIONS' DAVID

Erect before Hell's hurricane, between the Germans

and the sea, Belgium, still smiling through your pain; still, in

the hour of ruin, free ; While yet the cannon's note resounds along each

poplar-bordered way, O, bleeding Belgium, to your wounds what mankind

owes what man may say ?

Long years, while battle came and went afar at

Fate's malign caprice, Your kindly folk, serene, content, pursued the

pleasant ways of peace. They promised, all the mighty ones: "In that

calm land shall not be heard The thunder of our angry guns" — Kaiser and King,

they pledged their word.

And then, unwarning, arrogant, the cut-throat liar

of Berlin Tore into shreds his covenant: his armed hosts

were swarming in

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