Snow In France
The tattered grass of No Man's Land
Is white with snow to-day,
And up and down the deadly slopes
The ghosts of childhood play.
The sentries, peering from the line,
See in the tumbled snow
Light forms that were their little selves
A score of years ago.
We look and see the crumpled drifts
Piled in a little glen.
And you are back in Saxony
And children once again.
From joyous hand to laughing face
We watch the snow-balls fly.
The way they used ere we were men
Waiting our turn to die.
To-night across the empty slopes
The shells will scream once more,
And flares go up and bullets fly
The way they did before ;
But for a little space of peace
We watch them come and go.
The children that were you and I
At play among the snow.
The Undying Race
Here in the narrow broken way
Where silently we go.
Steadfast above their valiant clay
Forgotten crosses show.
Our whispers call to many a ghost
Across the flare-light pale,
And from their graves the Breton host
Stand up beside the Gael.
Year upon year of ancient sleep
Have rusted on our swords,
But once again our place we keep
Against the Saxon hordes.
Since Arthur ruled in Brittany,
And all the world was new.
The fires that burned our history,
Bum in our spirits too.
One speech beyond their memory
Binds us together still,
One dream of home wherein we see
River and sea and hill.
When in the night-time Fingal's peers
Fight their old wars again,
The blood of twice two thousand years
Leaps high in every vein.
Old songs that waked King Arthur's knights
Stir in our memory yet.
Old tales of olden heroes fights
That we cannot forget,
To die as Fingal's warriors died
The great men long ago,
Breton and Gael stand side by side
Against the ancient foe.
