Here Notre Dame, rare symphony in stone,
Utters a silence more divine than song;
And a mass is going forward in the dim heart of the Madeleine,
Lo, the bowed benches; and the stout magnificent beadle asleep in his chair!
In the mists of Paris, where the faces of a hundred peoples melt and merge,
Are soldiers come from battle, and a slow colorable whirl of uniforms,
And quiet funerals spinning black threads through the brilliant boulevards.
V
I look to the North; past the Forest of Compiègne where the pen
Has scratched the paper...
There's a jagged wall,
Making a grim, dark pattern on the sky—
Ypres...which was once a city!
Now behold,
These crosses marching to the horizon—
These graves, like the stilled surges of an ocean dead of grief!
And every mound a nameless Calvary!
O grateful years,
Let Belgium evermore be Britain's monument!
