Major Charles G. D. Roberts
Our feet, astonished, learned retreat;
Our souls rejected, still, defeat;
Unbroken still, a lion at bay,
We drew back grimly from Cambrai.
In blood and sweat, with slaughter spent,
They thought us beaten as we went,
Till suddenly we turned, and smote
The shout of triumph in their throat.
At last, at last we turned and stood—
And Marne's fair water ran with blood;
We stood by trench and steel and gun,
For now the indignant flight was done.
We ploughed their shaken ranks with fire,
We trod their masses into mire;
Our sabres drove through their retreat
As drives the whirlwind through young wheat.
At last, at last we drove them back
Along their drenched and smoking track;
We hurled them back, in blood and flame,
The reeking ways by which they came.
By cumbered road and desperate ford
How fled their shamed and harassed horde!
Shout, Sons of Freemen, for the day
When Marne so well avenged Cambrai!
TO SHAKESPEARE, IN 1916
With what write wrath must turn thy bones—
- What stern amazement flame thy dust,—
To feel so near this England's heart
- The outrage of the assassin's thrust.
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