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The Troops

Dim, gradual thinning of the shapeless gloom
Shudders to drizzling daybreak that reveals
Disconsolate men who stamp their sodden boots
And turn dulled, sunken faces to the sky
Haggard and hopeless. They, who have beaten down
The stale despair of night, must now renew
Their desolation in the truce of dawn,
Murdering the livid hours that grope for peace.

Yet these, who cling to life with stubborn hands,
Can grin through storms of death and find a gap
In the clawed, cruel tangles of his defence.
They march from safety, and the bird-sung joy
Of grass-green thickets, to the land where all
Is ruin, and nothing blossoms but the sky
That hastens over them where they endure
Sad, smoking, flat horizons, reeking woods,
And foundered trench-lines volleying doom for doom.

O my brave brown companions, when your souls
Flock silently away, and the eyeless dead
Shame the wild beast of battle on the ridge,
Death will stand grieving in that field of war
Since your unvanquished hardihood is spent.
And through some mooned Valhalla there will pass
Battalions and battalions, scarred from hell;
The unreturning army that was youth;
The legions who have suffered and are dust.

poem by Siegfried Sassoon
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Prelude: The Troops

poem by Siegfried Sassoon
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When a people reach the top of a hill,

When a people reach the top of a hill,
Then does God lean toward them,
Shortens tongues and lengthens arms.
A vision of their dead comes to the weak.
The moon shall not be too old
Before the new battalions rise,
Blue battalions.
The moon shall not be too old
When the children of change shall fall
Before the new battalions,
The blue battalions.

Mistakes and virtues will be trampled deep.
A church and a thief shall fall together.
A sword will come at the bidding of the eyeless,
The God-led, turning only to beckon,
Swinging a creed like a censer
At the head of the new battalions,
Blue battalions.
March the tools of nature's impulse,
Men born of wrong, men born of right,
Men of the new battalions,
The blue battalions.

The clang of swords is Thy wisdom,
The wounded make gestures like Thy Son's;
The feet of mad horses is one part --
Ay, another is the hand of a mother on the brow of a youth.
Then, swift as they charge through a shadow,
The men of the new battalions,
Blue battalions --
God lead them high, God lead them far,
God lead them far, God lead them high,
These new battalions,
The blue battalions.

poem by Stephen Crane
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The Triumph

When life was a cobweb of stars for Beauty who came
In the whisper of leaves or a bird's lone cry in the glen,
On dawn-lit hills and horizons girdled with flame
I sought for the triumph that troubles the faces of men.

With death in the terrible flickering gloom of the fight
I was cruel and fierce with despair; I was naked and bound;
was stricken: and Beauty returned through the shambles of night;
In the faces of men she returned; and their triumph I found.

poem by Siegfried Sassoon
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All Souls

A THIN moon faints in the sky o'erhead,
And dumb in the churchyard lie the dead.
Walk we not, Sweet, by garden ways,
Where the late rose hangs and the phlox delays,
But forth of the gate and down the road,
Past the church and the yews, to their dim abode.
For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night,
When the dead can hear and the dead have sight.

Fear not that sound like wind in the trees:
It is only their call that comes on the breeze;
Fear not the shudder that seems to pass:
It is only the tread of their feet on the grass;
Fear not the drip of the bough as you stoop:
It is only the touch of their hands that grope -
For the year's on the turn, and it's All Souls' night,
When the dead can yearn and the dead can smite.

III

And where should a man bring his sweet to woo
But here, where such hundreds were lovers too?
Where lie the dead lips that thirst to kiss,
The empty hands that their fellows miss,
Where the maid and her lover, from sere to green,
Sleep bed by bed, with the worm between?
For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night,
When the dead can hear and the dead have sight.

And now that they rise and walk in the cold,
Let us warm their blood and give youth to the old.
Let them see us and hear us, and say: 'Ah, thus
In the prime of the year it went with us!'
Till their lips drawn close, and so long unkist,
Forget they are mist that mingles with mist!
For the year's on the turn, and it's All Souls' night,
When the dead can burn and the dead can smite.

Till they say, as they hear us - poor dead, poor dead! -
'Just an hour of this, and our age-long bed -
Just a thrill of the old remembered pains
To kindle a flame in our frozen veins,
Just a touch, and a sight, and a floating apart,
As the chill of dawn strikes each phantom heart -
For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night,
When the dead can hear, and the dead have sight.'

And where should the living feel alive
But here in this wan white humming hive,
As the moon wastes down, and the dawn turns cold,
And one by one they creep back to the fold?
And where should a man hold his mate and say:
'One more, one more, ere we go their way'?
For the year's on the turn, and it's All Souls' night,
When the living can learn by the churchyard light.

VII

And how should we break faith who have seen
Those dead lips plight with the mist between,
And how forget, who have seen how soon
They lie thus chambered and cold to the moon?
How scorn, how hate, how strive, we too,
Who must do so soon as those others do?
For it's All Souls' night, and break of the day,
And behold, with the light the dead are away. . . .

poem by Edith Wharton
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The House Of Dust: Part 02: 11: Snow falls. The sky is grey, and sullenly glares

Snow falls. The sky is grey, and sullenly glares
With purple lights in the canyoned street.
The fiery sign on the dark tower wreathes and flares . . .
The trodden grass in the park is covered with white,
The streets grow silent beneath our feet . . .
The city dreams, it forgets its past to-night.

And one, from his high bright window looking down
Over the enchanted whiteness of the town,
Seeing through whirls of white the vague grey towers,
Desires like this to forget what will not pass,
The littered papers, the dust, the tarnished grass,
Grey death, stale ugliness, and sodden hours.
Deep in his heart old bells are beaten again,
Slurred bells of grief and pain,
Dull echoes of hideous times and poisonous places.
He desires to drown in a cold white peace of snow.
He desires to forget a million faces . . .

In one room breathes a woman who dies of hunger.
The clock ticks slowly and stops. And no one winds it.
In one room fade grey violets in a vase.
Snow flakes faintly hiss and melt on the window.
In one room, minute by minute, the flutist plays
The lamplit page of music, the tireless scales.
His hands are trembling, his short breath fails.

In one room, silently, lover looks upon lover,
And thinks the air is fire.
The drunkard swears and touches the harlot's heartstrings
With the sudden hand of desire.

And one goes late in the streets, and thinks of murder;
And one lies staring, and thinks of death.
And one, who has suffered, clenches her hands despairing,
And holds her breath . . .

Who are all these, who flow in the veins of the city,
Coil and revolve and dream,
Vanish or gleam?
Some mount up to the brain and flower in fire.
Some are destroyed; some die; some slowly stream.

And the new are born who desire to destroy the old;
And fires are kindled and quenched; and dreams are broken,
And walls flung down . . .
And the slow night whirls in snow over towers of dreamers,
And whiteness hushes the town.

poem by Conrad Potter Aiken
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The Spies' March

There are not leaders to lead us to honour, and yet without leaders we sally,
Each man reporting for duty alone, out of sight, out of reach, of his fellow.
There are no bugles to call the battalions, and yet without bugle we rally
From the ends of the earth to the ends of the earth, to follow the Standard of Yellow!
Fall in! O fall in! O fall in!

Not where the squadrons mass,
Not where the bayonets shine,
Not where the big shell shout as they pass
Over the firing-line;
Not where the wounded are,
Not where the nations die,
Killed in the cleanly game of war --
That is no place for a spy!
O Princes, Thrones and Powers, your work is less than ours --
Here is no place for a spy!

Trained to another use,
We march with colours furled,
Only concerned when Death breaks loose
On a front of half a world.
Only for General Death
The Yellow Flag may fly,
While we take post beneath --
That is the place for a spy.
Where Plague has spread his pinions
Over Nations and Dominions --
Then will be work for a spy!

The dropping shots begin,
The single funerals pass,
Our skirmishers run in,
The corpses dot the grass!
The howling towns stampede,
The tainted hamlets die.
Now it is war indeed --
Now there is room for a spy!
O Peoples, Kings and Lands,
We are waiting your commands --
What is the work for a spy?
(Drums) -- Fear is upon us, spy!

"Go where his pickets hide --
Unmask the shape they take,
Whether a gnat from the waterside,
Or a stinging fly in the brake,
Or filth of the crowded street,
Or a sick rat limping by,
Or a smear of spittle dried in the heat --
That is the work of a spy!
(Drums) -- Death is upon us, spy!

"What does he next prepare?
Whence will he move to attack? --
By water, earth or air? --
How can we head him back?
Shall we starve him out if we burn
Or bury his food-supply?
Slip through his lines and learn --
That is work for a spy!
(Drums) -- Get to your business, spy!

"Does he feint or strike in force?
Will he charge or ambuscade?
What is it checks his course?
Is he beaten or only delayed?
How long will the lull endure?
Is he retreating? Why?
Crawl to his camp and make sure --
That is the work for a spy!
(Drums) -- Fetch us our answer, spy!

"Ride with him girth to girth
Wherever the Pale Horse wheels
Wait on his councils, ear to earth,
And say what the dust reveals.
For the smoke of our torment rolls
Where the burning thousands lie;
What do we care for men's bodies or souls?
Bring us deliverance, spy!"

poem by Rudyard Kipling
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My Army, O, My Army!

My Army, O, my army! The time I dreamed of comes!
I want to see your colours; I want to hear your drums!
I heard them in my boyhood when all men’s hearts seemed cold;
I heard them as a Young Man—and I am growing old!
My army, O, my army! The signs are manifold!
My army, O, my army! My army and my Queen!
I used to sing your battle-songs when I was seventeen!
They came to me from ages, they came from far and near;
They came to me from Paris, they came to me from Here!—
They came when I was marching with the Army of the Rear.

My Queen’s dark eyes were flashing (oh, she was younger then!);
My Queen’s Red Cap was redder than the reddest blood of men!
My Queen marched like an Amazon, with anger manifest—
Her dark hair darkly matted from a knifegash in her breast
(For blood will flow where milk will not—her sisters knew the rest).

My legions ne’er were listed, they had no need to be;
My army ne’er was trained in arms—’twas trained in misery!
It took long years to mould it, but war could never drown
The shuffling of my army’s feet in the hunger-haunted town—
A little child was murdered, and so Tyranny went down.

My army kept no order, my army kept no time;
My army dug no trenches, yet died in dust and slime;
Its troops were fiercely ignorant, as to the manner born;
Its clothes were rags and tatters, or patches worn and torn—
Ah, me! It wore a uniform that I have often worn!

The faces of my army were ghastly as the dead;
My army’s cause was Hunger, my army’s cry was “Bread!”
It called on God and Mary and Christ of Nazareth;
It cried to kings and courtesans that fainted at its breath—
Its women beat their poor, flat breasts where babes had starved to death.

My army! My army—I hear the sound of drums
Above the roar of battles—and, lo! my army comes!
Nor creed of man may stay it—nor war, nor nation’s law—
The pikes go through the firing-lines as pitchforks go through straw—
Like pitchforks through the litter, while empires stand in awe.

poem by Henry Lawson
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The Dead To The Living

Work while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.

IN the childhood of April, while purple woods
With the young year's blood in them smiled,
I passed through the lanes and the wakened fields,
And stood by the grave of the child.
And the pain awoke that is never dead
Though it sometimes sleeps, and again
It set its teeth in this heart of mine,
And fastened its claws in my brain:
For it seemed so hard that the little hands
And the little well-loved head
Should be out of reach of my living lips,
And be side by side with the dead--
Not side by side with us who had loved,
But with these who had never seen
The grace of the smile, the gold of the hair,
And the eyes of my baby-queen.
Yet with trees about where the brown birds build,
And with long green grass above,

She lies in the cold sweet breast of earth
Beyond the reach of our love;
Whatever befalls in the coarse loud world,
We know she will never wake.
When I thought of the sorrow she might have known,
I was almost glad for her sake. . . .
Tears might have tired those kiss-closed eyes,
Grief hardened the mouth I kissed;
I was almost glad that my dear was dead
Because of the pain she had missed.
Oh, if I could but have died a child
With a white child-soul like hers,
As pure as the wind-flowers down in the copse,
Where the soul of the spring's self stirs;
Or if I had only done with it all,
And might lie by her side unmoved!
I envied the very clods of earth
Their place near the child I loved!

And my soul rose up in revolt at life,
As I stood dry-eyed by her grave,
When sudden the grass of the churchyard sod
Rolled back like a green smooth wave;
The brown earth looked like the brown sea rocks,
The tombstones were white like spray,
And white like surf were the curling folds
Of the shrouds where the dead men lay;
For each in his place with his quiet face
I saw the dead lie low,
Who had worked and suffered and found life sad,
So many sad years ago.
Unchanged by time I saw them lie
As when first they were laid to rest,
The tired eyes closed, the sad lips still,
And the work-worn hands on the breast.
There were some who had found the green world so grey,
They had left it before their time,
And some were little ones like my dear,
And some had died in their prime;
And some were old, they had had their fill
Of bitter unfruitful hours,
And knew that none of them, none, had known
A flower of a hope like ours!

Through their shut eyelids the dead looked up,
And without a voice they said:
'We lived without hope, without hope we died,
And hopeless we lie here dead;
And death is better than life that draws
Pain in, as it draws in breath,
If life never dreams of a coming day
When life shall not envy death.
Through the dark of our hours and our times we lived,
Uncheered by a single ray
Of such hope as lightens the lives of you
Who are finding life hard to-day;
With our little lanterns of human love
We lighted our dark warm night--
But you in the chill of the dawn are set
With your face to the eastern light.
Freedom is waiting with hands held out
Till you tear the veil from her face--
And when once men have seen the light of her eyes,
And felt her divine embrace,
The light of the world will be risen indeed,
And will shine in the eyes of men,
And those who come after will find life fair,
And their lives worth living then!
Will you strive to the light in your loud rough world,
That these things may come to pass,
Or lie in the shadow beside the child,
And strive to the sun through the grass?'

'My world while I may,' I cried; 'but you
Whose lives were as dark as your grave?'
'We too are a part of the coming light,'
They called through the smooth green wave.
Their white shrouds gleamed as the flood of green
Rolled over and hid them from me--
Hid all but the little hands and the hair,
And the face that I always see.

poem by Edith Nesbit
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Valhalla

Leading us on, to the land of eternity
Riding the cold cold winds of valhalla
The kingdom of odin is the kingdom of gods
Where only souls of the brave may rest in peace
But someone among them had the skill of deceit
And raised the hand that would open the road to hel
When the winds of valhalla run cold
Be sure that the blood will start to flow
When the winds of valhalla run cold
Valhalla
The ring has been broken and a soul must be saved
Among the bravest of men, who rides to hel
The longships are sailing and the chariots ride
And yes the anger of thor will serve you well
When the winds of valhalla run cold
Be sure that the blood will start to flow
When the winds of valhalla run cold
Valhalla
Raise your hands
Reach and valhalla will save your soul
Raise your eyes
And odin will lead us on
They say that history repeats itself
Upon the year of the seventh century
Well nobody knows, no you never can tell
So youd better run now and hide away
When the winds of valhalla run cold
Be sure that the blood will start to flow
When the winds of valhalla run cold
Valhalla

song performed by by Black Sabbath
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Too Late for Haste (Time will stop for You)

Too late for haste,
Hear from me the truth
For time will stop for you
And my voice you shall hear again
But then it will too late.

Too late for haste
For you are heading for doom
Doom will be your destiny
Is this also your priority?
Hear from me the truth
For gloom will be your eternity
Endless decades in Tartarus
Kingdom of Hades.

Too late for haste
Hear from me the truth
They are cming for your soul
I hear them these days in my sleep
They call for souls of dead
Death is innevitable my dear.
Only divine mercy can save us from hell.

poem by Efe Benjamin
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Disingenuousness

Here lies another box for nature,
Carbon ready;
Black to eyes down here,
Where death is at its job.

Up there you’ll hear a rhythmic sob
Or two from living yet-to-dies –
A humming lacrimoso –
It all but cleans the eyes:

Forget it –
The dismal show of grief –
Life is only chemistry –
Our stay is only brief.
It’s we who hype it up!

Diaphragms jerk again;
The jet monotone of hearses
Feeds the disingenuousness
Of undertakers –
They seem to stare at something up ahead –
For them, it’s in the blood,
To taxi off the dead.

The March of Death

Death death death death death death death death death death death

poem by Mark R Slaughter
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“The rank stench of those bodies haunts me still”

The rank stench of those bodies haunts me still
And I remember things I'd best forget.
For now we've marched to a green, trenchless land
Twelve miles from battering guns: along the grass
Brown lines of tents are hives for snoring men;
Wide, radiant water sways the floating sky
Below dark, shivering trees. And living-clean
Comes back with thoughts of home and hours of sleep.
To-night I smell the battle; miles away
Gun-thunder leaps and thuds along the ridge;
The spouting shells dig pits in fields of death,
And wounded men, are moaning in the woods.
If any friend be there whom I have loved,
God speed him safe to England with a gash.
It's sundown in the camp; some youngster laughs,
Lifting his mug and drinking health to all
Who come unscathed from that unpitying waste:
(Terror and ruin lurk behind his gaze.)
Another sits with tranquil, musing face,
Puffing bis pipe and dreaming of the girl
Whose last scrawled letter lies upon his knee.
The sunlight falls, low-ruddy from the west,
Upon their heads. Last week they might have died
And now they stretch their limbs in tired content.
One says 'The bloody Bosche has got the knock;
'And soon they'll crumple up and chuck their games.
'We've got the beggars on the run at last!'
Then I remembered someone that I'd seen
Dead in a squalid, miserable ditch,
Heedless of toiling feet that trod him down.
He was a Prussian with a decent face,
Young, fresh, and pleasant, so 1 dare to say.
No doubt he loathed the war and longed for peace,
And cursed our souls because we'd killed bis friends.
One night he yawned along a haIf-dug trench
Midnight; and then the British guns began
With heavy shrapnel bursting low, and 'hows'
Whistling to cut the wire with blinding din.
He didn't move; the digging still went on;
Men stooped and shovelled; someone gave a grunt,
And moaned and died with agony in the sludge.
Then the long hiss of shells lifted and stopped.
He stared into the gloom; a rocket curved,
And rifles rattled angrily on the left
Down by the wood, and there was noise of bombs.
Then the damned English loomed in scrambling haste
Out of the dark and struggled through the wire,
And there were shouts and eurses; someone screamed
And men began to blunder down the trench
Without their rifles. It was time to go:
He grabbed his coat; stood up, gulping some bread;
Then clutched his head and fell.
I found him there
In the gray morning when the place was held.
His face was in the mud; one arm flung out
As when he crumpled up; his sturdy legs
Were bent beneath bis trunk; heels to the skye.

poem by Siegfried Sassoon
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The Wild Geese

Wild geese fly overhead
In the wild Autumn weather.
Souls of the newly-dead
Crying and flying together.

Home from the last great fight,
The souls of the Irish farin'
With a wild heart in the night,
A grey eye turned to Erin.

High and high in the sky,
From the red fields of slaughter
Ever they fly and cry
For the brown bog, the grey water.

Wild geese in the wild even,
Steady and strong their flight,
Their beds are made in Heaven,
All of the down white.

They have forgone that bliss
Till they have seen once more
The little land of peace,
Green and bright as of yore.

High o'er the sheep and cattle,
The bogs and the mountains lone,
The souls new-home from the battle
Cry their love and are flown.

poem by Katharine Tynan
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A draggled train and blood-stained,
With helmets dented in,
With battered, loosened armour,
But with a cheerful grin.
No dark look bent upon me;
I noted to my shame
That Friends of Fallen Fortunes
Are aye the last to blame.

Not one of all I’d trusted,
Who’d followed to their cost,
Save those who lay face upward
On that red field I’d lost;
And here and there a soldier
I’d trusted not at all,
Like an unexpected mourner
At a poor man’s funeral.

And as the horses stumbled,
And the footmen limped along,
They all joined in the chorus
Of a good old Next Time song.
Behind us in the distance,
By hill and lane and wood,
My ever-dwindling rear-guard
Fell back again and stood.

They recked not wounds nor losses,
They all seemed very kind,
From knight who rode beside me
To boor who limped behind;
And some borne in their litters
Through that long agony—
Their death-white, pain-drawn faces
Had no reproach for me.

And so from noon till darkness,
Till morning grim and grey,
The Earl’s son and the Peasant’s
Were brothers that dark day.
I straightened in my saddle,
And proudly glanced me round—
I still was King of Comrades,
Whoever might be crowned!

I straightened in my saddle,
And glanced round proudly then—
Whoe’er might reign a season,
I held the hearts of men!
No power of gold can buy them
While battles shall be fought—
The Friends of Fallen Fortunes
Are never to be bought.

Through rain and marsh and hunger,
To what their fate might bring,
The remnants of my legions
Toiled on to join their King.
From north and south the captains
Of scattered bands won through—
Beneath its beaten colours
My beaten army grew.

And in the West before us—
The West was ever thus—
More Friends of Fallen Fortunes
Were gathering food for us;
For refuge and for succour—
For safety, food and rest—
The best of beaten armies
For ever seek the West.

With these men for my captains,
When we marched east again,
Our enemies were scattered
Like dust across the plain.
Our city lay before us,
And as we marched along,
We joined the grand old chorus
Of the glorious Next Time song.
And though they wear no armour,
And bear no blade nor bill,
The Friends of Fallen Fortunes
Are riding with me still;
And, many times defeated
By city, field, and sea,
The Friends of Fallen Fortunes
March on to Victory.

poem by Henry Lawson
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At Fredericksburg—Dec. 13, 1862

GOD send us peace, and keep red strife away;
But should it come, God send us men and steel!
The land is dead that dare not face the day
When foreign danger threats the common weal.

Defenders strong are they that homes defend;
From ready arms the spoiler keeps afar.
Well blest the country that has sons to lend
From trades of peace to learn the trade of war.

Thrice blest the nation that has every son
A soldier, ready for the warning sound;
Who marches homeward when the fight is done,
To swing the hammer and to till the ground.

Call back that morning, with its lurid light,
When through our land the awful war-bell tolled;
When lips were mute, and women's faces white
As the pale cloud that out from Sumter rolled.

Call back that morn: an instant all were dumb,
As if the shot had struck the Nation's life;
Then cleared the smoke, and rolled the calling drum,
And men streamed in to meet the coming strife,

They closed the ledger and they stilled the loom.
The plow left rusting in the prairie farm;
They saw but ' Union' in the gathering gloom;
The tearless women helped the men to arm;

Brigades from towns—each village sent its band:
German and Irish—every race and faith;
There was no question then of native land,
But—love the Flag and follow it to death.

No need to tell their tale: through every age
The splendid story shall be sung and said;
But let me draw one picture from the page—
For words of song embalm the hero dead.

The smooth hill is bare, and the cannons are planted,
Like Gorgon fates shading its terrible brow;
The word has been passed that the stormers are wanted,
And Burnside's battalions are mustering now.
The armies stand by to behold the dread meeting;
The work must be done by a desperate few;
The black-mouthed guns on the height give them greeting—
From gun-mouth to plain every grass blade in view.
Strong earthworks are there, and the rifles behind them
Are Georgia militia—an Irish brigade—
Their caps have green badges, as if to remind them
Of all the brave record their country has made.

The stormers go forward—the Federals cheer them;
They breast the smooth hillside—the black mouths are dumb;
The riflemen lie in the works till they near them,
And cover the stormers as upward they come.
Was ever a death-march so grand and so solemn?
At last, the dark summit with flame is enlined;
The great guns belch doom on the sacrificed column,
That reels from the height, leaving hundreds behind.
The armies are hushed—there is no cause for cheering:
The fall of brave men to brave men is a pain.
Again come the stormers! and as they are nearing
The flame-sheeted rifle-lines, reel back again.
And so till full noon come the Federal masses—
Flung back from the height, as the cliff flings a wave;
Brigade on brigade to the death-struggle passes,
No wavering rank till it steps on the grave.

Then comes a brief lull, and the smoke-pall is lifted,
The green of the hillside no longer is seen;
The dead soldiers lie as the sea-weed is drifted,
The earthworks still held by the badges of green.
Have they quailed? is the word. No: again they are forming—
Again comes a column to death and defeat!
What is it in these who shall now do the storming
That makes every Georgian spring to his feet?

' O God! what a pity!' they cry in their cover,
As rifles are readied and bayonets made tight;
''Tis Meagher and his fellows! their caps have green clover;
'Tis Greek to Greek now for the rest of the fight!'
Twelve hundred the column, their rent flag before them,
With Meagher at their head, they have dashed at the hill!
Their foemen are proud of the country that bore them;
But, Irish in love, they are enemies still.
Out rings the fierce word, ' Let them have it! ' the rifles
Are emptied point-blank in the hearts of the foe:
It is gueen against green, but a principle stifles
The Irishman's love in the Georgian's blow.
The column has reeled, but it is not defeated;
In front of the guns they re-form and attack;
Six times they have done it, and six times retreated;
Twelve hundred they came, and two hundred go back.
Two hundred go back with the chivalrous story;
The wild day is closed in the night's solemn shroud;
A thousand lie dead, but their death was a glory
That calls not for tears—the Green Badges are proud!

Bright honor be theirs who for honor were fearless,
Who charged for their fl:ig to the grim cannon's mouth;
And honor to them who were true, though not tearless,—
Who bravely that day kept the cause of the South.
The quarrel is done—God avert such another;
The lesson it brought we should evermore heed:
Who loveth the Flag is a man and a brother,
No matter what birth or what race or what creed.

poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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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 God 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 dyke,
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 massed 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 noble 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 Hell 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 Saturday 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, God and Right,
At grim, red Langemarck.

Wonderful battles have shaken this world,
Since the Dawn-God 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 godlike 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

poem by William Wilfred Campbell
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Gunnar's Howe Above The House At Lithend

Ye who have come o’er the sea
to behold this grey minster of lands,
Whose floor is the tomb of time past,
and whose walls by the toil of dead hands
Show pictures amidst of the ruin
of deeds that have overpast death,
Stay by this tomb in a tomb
to ask of who lieth beneath.
Ah! the world changeth too soon,
that ye stand there with unbated breath,
As I name him that Gunnar of old,
who erst in the haymaking tide
Felt all the land fragrant and fresh,
as amidst of the edges he died.
Too swiftly fame fadeth away,
if ye tremble not lest once again
The grey mound should open and show him
glad-eyed without grudging or pain.
Little labour methinks to behold him
but the tale-teller laboured in vain.

Little labour for ears that may hearken
to hear his death-conquering song,
Till the heart swells to think of the gladness
undying that overcame wrong.
O young is the world yet meseemeth
and the hope of it flourishing green,
When the words of a man unremembered
so bridge all the days that have been,
As we look round about on the land
that these nine hundred years he hath seen.

Dusk is abroad on the grass
of this valley amidst of the hill:
Dusk that shall never be dark
till the dawn hard on midnight shall fill
The trench under Eyiafell’s snow,
and the grey plain the sea meeteth grey.
White, high aloft hangs the moon
that no dark night shall brighten ere day,
For here day and night toileth the summer
lest deedless his time pass away.

poem by William Morris
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Picture-Show

And still they come and go: and this is all I know—
That from the gloom I watch an endless picture-show,
Where wild or listless faces flicker on their way,
With glad or grievous hearts I’ll never understand
Because Time spins so fast, and they’ve no time to stay
Beyond the moment’s gesture of a lifted hand.

And still, between the shadow and the blinding flame,
The brave despair of men flings onward, ever the same
As in those doom-lit years that wait them, and have been...
And life is just the picture dancing on a screen.

poem by Siegfried Sassoon
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Futility

Dusting my books I spent a busy day:
Not ancient toes, time-hallowed and unread,
but modern volumes, classics in their way,
whose makers now are numbered with the dead;
Men of a generation more than mine,
With whom I tattled, battled and drank wine.

I worshipped them, rejoiced in their success,
Grudging them not the gold that goes with fame.
I thought them near-immortal, I confess,
And naught could dim the glory of each name.
How I perused their pages with delight! . . .
To-day I peer with sadness in my sight.

For, death has pricked each to a flat balloon.
A score of years have gone, they're clean forgot.
Who would have visioned such a dreary doom?
By God! I'd like to burn the blasted lot.
Only, old books are mighty hard to burn:
They char, they flicker and their pages turn.

And as you stand to poke them in the flame,
You see a living line that stabs the heart.
Brave writing that! It seems a cursed shame
That to a bonfire it should play it's part.
Poor book! You're crying, and you're not alone:
Some day someone will surely burn my own.

No, I will dust my books and put them by,
Yet never look into their leaves again;
For scarce a soul remembers them save I,
Re-reading them would only give me pain.
So I will sigh, and say with curling lip:
Futility! Thy name is authorship.

poem by Robert William Service
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Come Out, Come Out

Come out, come out, ye souls that serve, why will ye die?
or will ye sit and stifle in your prison-homes
dreaming of some master that holds the winds in leash
and the waves of darkness yonder in the gaunt hollow of night?
nay, there is none that rules: all is a strife of the winds
and the night shall billow in storm full oft ere all be done.
For this is the hard doom that is laid on all of you,
to be that whereof ye dream, dreaming against your will.
But first ye must travel the many ways, and your close-wrapt souls
must be blown thro' with the rain that comes from the homeless dark:
for until ye have had care of the wastes there shall be no truce
for them nor you, nor home, but ever the ancient feud;
and the soul of man must house the cry of the darkling waves
as he follows the ridge above the waters shuddering to-wards night,
and the rains and the winds that roam anhunger'd for some heart's warmth.
Go: tho' ye find it bitter, yet must ye be bare
to the wind and the sea and the night and the wail of birds in the sky;
go: tho' the going be hard and the goal blinded with rain
yet the staying is a death that is never soften'd with sleep.

poem by Christopher John Brennan
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En.Citatepedia®.ro

The Troops

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At Fredericksburg—Dec. 13, 1862

Langemarck At Ypres

Gunnar's Howe Above The House At Lithend

Picture-Show

Futility

Come Out, Come Out

En.Citatepedia^®.ro