Page:Poems of the Great War - Cunliffe.djvu/193

 ��On exery heart, lest we forget — Secure at home — engrave this debt !

Too dehcate is flesh to be

The shield that nations interpose

'TwLxt red Ambition and his foes —

The bastion of Liberty.

So beautiful their bodies were,

Built with so exquisite a care :

So young and fit and lithe and fair.

The very flower of us were they,

The very flower, but yesterday !

Yet now so pitiful they lie,

Where love of country bade them hie

To fight this fierce Caprice — and die.

All mangled now, where shells have burst

And lead and steel have done their worst ;

The tender tissues ploughed away,

The year's slow processes effaced :

The Mother of us all, disgraced.

And some leave wives behind, young wives;

Already some have launched new lives :

A little daughter, little son ;

For thus this blundering world goes on.

But never more will any see

The old secure felicity.

The kindnesses that made us glad

Before the world went mad.

�� �