ON VIMY RIDGE

By Christopher Morley

On Vimy Ridge the Flag renewed

Her youth: the thunder of the guns

Recalled the crimson plenitude

Shed by her ancient sons.

Once more her white and scarlet bands

Were new-baptized with battle sweat:

She felt the clutch of desperate hands,

The push of bayonet.

Across that bloody snarl of wire

Her colors blossomed clean as flame:

The Bride of Glory, in desire

To meet her groom she came.

The lightning in her folds she kept,

The sky, the stars, the dew —

Impassioned, in her youth she swept

On Vimy, born anew!