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.
Wilfred Campbell
CANADIANS
With arrows on their quarters and with numbers on their hoofs,
With the trampling sound of twenty that re-echoes in the roofs,
Low of crest and dull of coat, wan and wild of eye,
Through our English village the Canadians go by.
Shying at a passing cart, swerving from a car,
Tossing up an anxious head to flaunt a snowy star,
Racking at a Yankee gait, reaching at the rein,
Twenty raw Canadians are tasting life again!