Page:Poems of the Great War - Cunliffe.djvu/203

 ��O GLORIOUS FRANCE

You have become a forge of snow white fire,

A crucible of molten steel, O France !

Your sons are stars who cluster to a dawn

And fade in light for you, O glorious France !

They pass through meteor changes with a song

Which to all islands and all continents

Says life is neither comfort, wealth, nor fame,

Nor quiet hearthstones, friendship, wife nor child,

Nor love, nor youth's delight, nor manhood's

power. Nor many days spent in a chosen work, Nor honored merit, nor the patterned theme Of daih' labor, nor the crowns nor wreaths Of seventy years.

These are not all of life, O France, whose sons amid the rolling thunder Of cannon stand in trenches where the dead Clog the ensanguined ice. But life to these Prophetic and enraptured souls is vision, And the keen ecstasy of fated strife, And divination of the loss as gain, And reading mysteries with brightened eyes

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