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YPRES
YPRES
CITY of stark desolation,
Infinite voices of silence,
Crying aloud in the day time,
Whispering shrill in the moonlight,
Ask of the world, appealing:
"What are you now but a name?"
Hushed are your streets, and the rumble
Of lorries and wagons and limbers
And low, dull tread of battalions,
Moving stubbornly cheerful
Back of invisible fighters
Muddily bedded in Flanders—
These alone for your roadways,
And these for the hours of darkness,
Wide to inscrutable heaven
Lie, in their ruin all equal,
Houses and hovels abandoned,
Windowiess yawnings and pillars,
Chasms and doorways and gables,
Tottering spectres of brickwork
Strewn through the naked chambers—
Never a home for the seeking,
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