GHELUVELT.
EPITAPH ON THE WORCESTERS. OCTOBER 31, 1914.
Askest thou of these graves? They’ll tell thee,
O stranger, in England
How we Worcesters lie where we redeem’d the battle.
THE WEST FRONT.
AN ENGLISH MOTHER, ON LOOKING INTO MASEFIELD’S “OLD FRONT LINE.”
No country know I so well
as this landscape of hell.
Why bring you to my pain
these shadow’d effigys
Of barb’d wire, riven trees,
the corpse-strewn blasted plain?
And the names—Hebuterne
Bethune and La Bassée—
I have nothing to learn—
Contalmaison, Boisselle,
And one where night and day
my heart would pray and dwell;
A desert sanctuary,
where in holy vigil
Year-long I have held my faith
against th’ imaginings
Of horror and agony
in an ordeal above
The tears of suffering
and took aid of angels:
This was the temple of God:
no mortuary of kings
Ever gathered the spoils
of such chivalry and love:
No pilgrim shrine soe’er
hath assembled such prayer—
With rich incense-wafted
ritual and requiem
Not beauteous batter’d Rheims
nor lorn Jerusalem.