Page:Soldier poets, songs of the fighting men, 1916.djvu/88

Rh For all the signs of reverence they show,

Save that in the encircling shady yard,

Heaped with scattered stone, the uprooted graves

And broken crosses speak of holier days:

The nave, choked with charred rafters from the roof,

Pleads untended to the wind and rain

Mutely; shelter even bats despise.

Standing stricken, the weary shrapnelled houses

Seem skeletons, grim and ghastly shapes

Beckoning with scraggy fingers to the sky

In silent plea for justice. A window gapes,

Laughing in mockery the frame still holds,

Grinning its execration.

No solid roof

Stands to offer hiding to a dog,

Whilst in the rooms that once were clean and white,

Midst the accumulating broken tiles,

Grasses and weeds already have their hold

Encroaching from the garden.

The road itself is seamed, pock-marked with holes

Where you might hide ten men, nor see their heads,

Those near the tiny stream filled to the brim

With dank and turbid water, in greening slime

The bloated body of a puny kitten

Floats, decayed and foul. 84