<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=519155" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Cambrai and Marne</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Before our trenches at Cambrai<br>We saw their columns cringe away.<br>We saw their masses melt and reel<br>Before our line of leaping steel.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A handful to their storming hordes,<br>We scourged them with the scourge of swords,<br>And still, the more we slew, the more<br>Came up for every slain a score.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Between the hedges and the town<br>The cursing squadrons we rode down;<br>To stay them we outpoured our blood<br>Between the beetfields and the wood.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In that red hell of shrieking shell<br>Unfaltering our gunners fell;<br>They fell, or ere that day was done,<br>Beside the last unshattered gun.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But still we held them, like a wall<br>On which the breakers vainly fall–<br>Till came the word, and we obeyed,<br>Reluctant, bleeding, undismayed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Our feet, astonished, learned retreat;<br>Our souls rejected still defeat;<br>Unbroken still, a lion at bay,<br>We drew back grimly from Cambrai.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In blood and sweat, with slaughter spent,<br>They thought us beaten as we went,<br>Till suddenly we turned, and smote<br>The shout of triumph in their throat.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">At last, at last we turned and stood–<br>And Marne's fair water ran with blood;<br>We stood by trench and steel and gun,<br>For now the indignant flight was done.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We ploughed their shaken ranks with fire,<br>We trod their masses into mire;<br>Our sabres drove through their retreat<br>As drives the whirlwind through young wheat.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">At last, at last we drove them back<br>Along their drenched and smoking track;<br>We hurled them back, in blood and flame,<br>The reeking ways by which they came.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">By cumbered road and desperate ford<br>How fled their shamed and harassed horde!<br>Shout, Sons of Freemen, for the day<br>When Marne so well avenged Cambrai!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Sir+Charles+George+Douglas+Roberts">Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=519155" data-title="Cambrai and Marne de Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts" data-description="Before our trenches at Cambrai We saw their columns cringe away. We saw their masses melt and reel Before our line of leaping steel. A handful to their storming hordes, We scourged them with the scourge of swords, And still, the more we slew, the..."></div> </div> </div>

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