Page:The Muse in Arms, Osborn (ed), 1917.djvu/82

 XVIII

(Loos, 1915)

HE firefly haunts were lighted yet,

As we scaled the top of the parapet;

But the east grew pale to another fire,

As our bayonets gleamed by the foeman's wire;

And the sky was tinged with gold and grey,

And under our feet the dead men lay,

Stiff by the loop-holed barricade;

Food of the bomb and the hand-grenade;

Still in the slushy pool and mud—

Ah, the path we came was a path of blood,

When we went to Loos in the morning.

A little grey church at the foot of a hill,

With powdered glass on the window-sill—

The shell-scarred stone and the broken tile,

Littered the chancel, nave, and aisle—

Broken the altar and smashed the pyx,

And the rubble covered the crucifix;

This we saw when the charge was done,

And the gas-clouds paled in the rising sun,

As we entered Loos in the morning.

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