Till many million women’s eyes are wet!
Ravage and slay! Pile up the eternal debt!
But when the fanes of France and Belgium fell
Another ruin was on earth as well,
And ashes that the race shall not forget.
Not by the devastation of the guns,
Nor tempest-shock, nor steel’s subverting edge,
Nor yet the slow erasure of the suns
Thy downfall came, betrayer of thy trust!
But at the dissolution of a pledge