294 MARGARET L. WOODS
The fury of their marshalled guns might plough
no dreadful lane Through those Reserves that waited in the ambush
of the rain, On the riven plain of Flanders, where hills of men
lay moaning.
They hurled upon an army The bellowing heart of Hell, We saw but the meadows Torn with their shot and shell. We heard not the march of the succours that were
coming, Their old forgotten bugle-calls, the fifes and the
drumming, But they gathered and they gathered from the
graves where they had lain A hundred years, hundreds of years, on the old
battle-plain, And the young graves of Flanders, all fresh with dews of mourning.
Marlborough's men and Wellington's, the burghers
of Courtrai, The warriors of Plantagenet, King Louis' Gants
glaces — And the young, young dead from Mons and the
Marne river.
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