Page:More songs by the fighting men, soldier poets, second series, 1917.djvu/81

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Harold John Jarvis

At a Wayside Shrine

THE column halts before a wayside shrine
To change formation into battle line
From double file. 'Tis even, and the sun
Its daily circling race has wellnigh done.
Behind me in the West, a dying glow
Of gold still gleams, to cast a pale halo
Upon the shrine.


How many men before
To-night have halted at this spot, and wore
The same grim, ready look that I see now
Painted on every face from chin to brow,
And in each eye? One and all are ready
For come what may; each man now stands steady
Waiting command.


And now the line will pass
The shrine—itself as steady as the mass
Of England's sons slow moving to the fray,
Their Destiny now in the hands of—say,
The dim Divinity within that shrine—
A loving God (the stricken Christ His sign
Of Love) or what?


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