Page:Poems of the Great War - Cunliffe.djvu/87

 " Water !" — Xo use, no use — too late ;

His breast is shot away — don't move him — God,

how he bled ! What is it, comrade? A letter — make a lijiht : " Wr have not heard since you left home. . . . I cannot

bear if. ..." Turn the sheet over: — "Oh, my dear, be careful !" Here is the signature — the address — a distant

village ; I have been there — an ancient, quiet village of the

north, Fronting the open sea. Yes, comrade, T will write — he smiles : To lie here, thinking, suffering, remembering; To be left to die alone !

4.

But not alone :

Passing brother, you have yet a grim companion ;

Along the edge of the thicket just now, as I went to the brook down there for water,

I stumbled over something that must have been left from the charge a week ago :

A body that held the remnants of a man.

He had dragged himself to the brook, he lay im- bedded in tall waving grass ;

His stomach had been ripped open by shrapnel, maggots were heaving in the wound ;

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