Page:Poems of the Great War - Cunliffe.djvu/192

 166 E. V. LUCAS

��THE DEBT

No more old England will they see — The men who've died for you and me.

So lone and cold they lie ; but we, We still have life ; we still may greet Our pleasant friends in home and street ; We still have life, are able still To climb the turf of Bignor Hill, To see the placid sheep go by, To hear the sheep-dog's eager cry. To feel the sun, to taste the rain, To smell the Autumn scents again Beneath the brown and gold and red Which old October's brush has spread, To hear the robin in the lane, To look upon the English sky.

So young they were, so strong and well.

Until the bitter summons fell —

Too young to die.

Yet there on foreign soil they lie,

So pitiful, with glassy eye

And limbs all tumbled anyhow :

Quite finished, now.

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