Page:Poems of the Great War - Cunliffe.djvu/320

 294 MARGARET L. WOODS

The fury of their marshalled guns might plough

no dreadful lane Through those Reserves that waited in the ambush

of the rain, On the riven plain of Flanders, where hills of men

lay moaning.

They hurled upon an army The bellowing heart of Hell, We saw but the meadows Torn with their shot and shell. We heard not the march of the succours that were

coming, Their old forgotten bugle-calls, the fifes and the

drumming, But they gathered and they gathered from the

graves where they had lain A hundred years, hundreds of years, on the old

battle-plain, And the young graves of Flanders, all fresh with dews of mourning.

Marlborough's men and Wellington's, the burghers

of Courtrai, The warriors of Plantagenet, King Louis' Gants

glaces — And the young, young dead from Mons and the

Marne river.

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