Battle Passes

A quaint old gabled cottage sleeps be-

    tween the raving hills.

To right and left are livid strife, but on the

    deep, wide sills

The purple pot-flowers swell and glow, and

    o'er the walls and eaves

Prinked creeper steals caressing hands, the

    poplar drips its leaves.

      Within the garden hot and sweet

      Fair form and woven color meet,

While down the clear, cool stones, 'tween

    banks with branch and blossom gay,

A little, bridged, blind rivulet goes touching

    out its way.

Peace lingers hidden from the knife, the tear-

    ing blinding shell,

Where falls the spattered sunlight on a lichen-

    covered well.

No voice is here, no fall of feet, no smoke lifts

    cool and grey,

But on the granite stoop a cat blinks vaguely

    at the day.

      From hill to hill across the vale

      Storms man's terrific iron gale;

The cot roof on a brooding dove recks not the

    distant gun.

A brown hen scolds her chickens chasing

    midges in the sun.

Now down the eastward slope they come.

No call of life, no beat of drum,

But stealthily, and in the green,

Low hid, with rifle and machine,

Spit hate and death; and red blood flows

To shame the whiteness of the rose.

Crack followes crash; the bestial roar

Of gastly and insensate war

Breaks on the cot. A rending stoke,

The red roof springs, and in the smoke

And spume of shells the riven walls

Pile where the splintered elm-tree spawls.

From westward, streaming down hill,

Shot-ravaged, thinned, but urgent still,

The brown, fierce, blooded Anzacs sweep,

And Hell leaps a up. The lilies weep

Strange crimson tears. Tight-lipped and mute,

The grim, gaunt soldiers stab and shoot.

It passes. Frantic, fleeing death,

Wild-eyed, foam-flecked and every breath

A labored agony, like deer

That feel the hounds' keen teeth, appear

The Prussian men, and, wild to slay

The hunters press upon their prey.

Cries fade and fitful shots die down. The

    Tumbled ruin now

Smoke faintly in the summer light, and lifts

    The trodden bough.

A sigh stirs in the trampled green, and held

    And tainted red

The rill creeps o'er a dead man's face and

    steals along its bed.

      One deep among the lilacs thrown

      Shock all the stillness with a moan.

Peace like the snowflake lights again where

    utter silence lies,

And softly with white finger-tips she seals a

    soldier eyes.