A Treasury of War Poetry Part 8

"I will die cheering, if I needs must die; So shall my last breath write upon my lips _Viva Italia!_ when my spirit slips Down the great darkness from the mountain sky; And those who shall behold me where I lie Shall murmur: 'Look, you! how his spirit dips From glory into glory! the eclipse Of death is vanquished! Lo, his victor-cry!'

"Live, thou, upon my lips, Italia mine, The sacred death-cry of my frozen clay!

Let thy dear light from my dead body shine And to the pa.s.ser-by thy message say: '_Ecco!_ though heaven has made my skies divine, My sons' love sanctifies my soil for aye!'"

_George Edward Woodberry_

AUSTRALIA TO ENGLAND

By all the deeds to Thy dear glory done, By all the life blood, spilt to serve Thy need, By all the fettered lives Thy touch hath freed, By all Thy dream in us anew begun; By all the guerdon English sire to son Hath given of highest vision, kingliest deed, By all Thine agony, of G.o.d decreed For trial and strength, our fate with Thine is one.

Still dwells Thy spirit in our hearts and lips, Honour and life we hold from none but Thee, And if we live Thy pensioners no more But seek a nation's might of men and ships, 'T is but that when the world is black with war Thy sons may stand beside Thee strong and free.

_Archibald T. Strong_

_August, 1914_

CANADA TO ENGLAND

Great names of thy great captains gone before Beat with our blood, who have that blood of thee: Raleigh and Grenville, Wolfe, and all the free Fine souls who dared to front a world in war.

Such only may outreach the envious years Where feebler crowns and fainter stars remove, Nurtured in one remembrance and one love Too high for pa.s.sion and too stern for tears.

O little isle our fathers held for home, Not, not alone thy standards and thy hosts Lead where thy sons shall follow, Mother Land: Quick as the north wind, ardent as the foam, Behold, behold the invulnerable ghosts Of all past greatnesses about thee stand.

_Marjorie L.C. Pickthall_

LANGEMARCK AT YPRES

This is the ballad of Langemarck, A story of glory and might; Of the vast Hun horde, and Canada's part In the great grim fight.

It was April fair on the Flanders Fields, But the dreadest April then That ever the years, in their fateful flight, Had brought to this world of men.

North and east, a monster wall, The mighty Hun ranks lay, With fort on fort, and iron-ringed trench, Menacing, grim and gray.

And south and west, like a serpent of fire, Serried the British lines, And in between, the dying and dead, And the stench of blood, and the trampled mud, On the fair, sweet Belgian vines.

And far to the eastward, harnessed and taut, Like a scimitar, shining and keen, Gleaming out of that ominous gloom, Old France's hosts were seen.

When out of the grim Hun lines one night, There rolled a sinister smoke;-- A strange, weird cloud, like a pale, green shroud, And death lurked in its cloak.

On a fiend-like wind it curled along Over the brave French ranks, Like a monster tree its vapours spread, In hideous, burning banks Of poisonous fumes that scorched the night With their sulphurous demon danks.

And men went mad with horror, and fled From that terrible, strangling death, That seemed to sear both body and soul With its baleful, flaming breath.

Till even the little dark men of the south, Who feared neither G.o.d nor man, Those fierce, wild fighters of Afric's steppes, Broke their battalions and ran:--

Ran as they never had run before, Gasping, and fainting for breath; For they knew 't was no human foe that slew; And that hideous smoke meant death.

Then red in the reek of that evil cloud, The Hun swept over the plain; And the murderer's dirk did its monster work, 'Mid the scythe-like shrapnel rain;

Till it seemed that at last the brute Hun hordes Had broken that wall of steel; And that soon, through this breach in the freeman's d.y.k.e, His trampling hosts would wheel;--

And sweep to the south in ravaging might, And Europe's peoples again Be trodden under the tyrant's heel, Like herds, in the Prussian pen.

But in that line on the British right, There ma.s.sed a corps amain, Of men who hailed from a far west land Of mountain and forest and plain;

Men new to war and its dreadest deeds, But n.o.ble and staunch and true; Men of the open, East and West, Brew of old Britain's brew.

These were the men out there that night, When h.e.l.l loomed close ahead; Who saw that pitiful, hideous rout, And breathed those gases dread; While some went under and some went mad; But never a man there fled.

For the word was "Canada," theirs to fight, And keep on fighting still;-- Britain said, fight, and fight they would, Though the Devil himself in sulphurous mood Came over that hideous hill.

Yea, stubborn, they stood, that hero band, Where no soul hoped to live; For five, 'gainst eighty thousand men, Were hopeless odds to give.

Yea, fought they on! 'T was Friday eve, When that demon gas drove down; 'T was Sat.u.r.day eve that saw them still Grimly holding their own;

Sunday, Monday, saw them yet, A steadily lessening band, With "no surrender" in their hearts, But the dream of a far-off land,

Where mother and sister and love would weep For the hushed heart lying still;-- But never a thought but to do their part, And work the Empire's will.

Ringed round, hemmed in, and back to back, They fought there under the dark, And won for Empire, G.o.d and Right, At grim, red Langemarck.

Wonderful battles have shaken this world, Since the Dawn-G.o.d overthrew Dis; Wonderful struggles of right against wrong, Sung in the rhymes of the world's great song, But never a greater than this.

Bannockburn, Inkerman, Balaclava, Marathon's G.o.dlike stand; But never a more heroic deed, And never a greater warrior breed, In any war-man's land.

This is the ballad of Langemarck, A story of glory and might; Of the vast Hun horde, and Canada's part In the great, grim fight.

_Wilfred Campbell_

CANADIANS