Part 21

Till it seemed that at last the brute Hun hordes Had broken that wall of steel; And that soon, through this breach in the freeman's dyke, His trampling hosts would wheel;--

And sweep to the south in ravaging might, And Europe's peoples again Be trodden under the tyrant's heel, Like herds, in the Prussian pen.

But in that line on the British right, There massed a corps amain, Of men who hailed from a far west land Of mountain and forest and plain;

Men new to war and its dreadest deeds, But noble and staunch and true; Men of the open, East and West, Brew of old Britain's brew.

These were the men out there that night, When Hell loomed close ahead; Who saw that pitiful, hideous rout, And breathed those gases dread; While some went under and some went mad; But never a man there fled.

For the word was "Canada," theirs to fight, And keep on fighting still;-- Britain said, fight, and fight they would, Though the Devil himself in sulphurous mood Came over that hideous hill.

Yea, stubborn, they stood, that hero band, Where no soul hoped to live; For five, 'gainst eighty thousand men, Were hopeless odds to give.

Yea, fought they on! 'T was Friday eve, When that demon gas drove down; 'T was Saturday eve that saw them still Grimly holding their own;

Sunday, Monday, saw them yet, A steadily lessening band, With "no surrender" in their hearts, But the dream of a far-off land,

Where mother and sister and love would weep For the hushed heart lying still;-- But never a thought but to do their part, And work the Empire's will.

Ringed round, hemmed in, and back to back, They fought there under the dark, And won for Empire, God and Right, At grim, red Langemarck.

Wonderful battles have shaken this world, Since the Dawn-God overthrew Dis; Wonderful struggles of right against wrong, Sung in the rhymes of the world's great song, But never a greater than this.

Bannockburn, Inkerman, Balaclava, Marathon's godlike stand; But never a more heroic deed, And never a greater warrior breed, In any war-man's land.

This is the ballad of Langemarck, A story of glory and might; Of the vast Hun horde, and Canada's part In the great, grim fight.

Wilfred Campbell

CANADIANS

With arrows on their quarters and with numbers on their hoofs, With the trampling sound of twenty that re-echoes in the roofs, Low of crest and dull of coat, wan and wild of eye, Through our English village the Canadians go by.

Shying at a passing cart, swerving from a car, Tossing up an anxious head to flaunt a snowy star, Racking at a Yankee gait, reaching at the rein, Twenty raw Canadians are tasting life again!

Hollow-necked and hollow-flanked, lean of rib and hip, Strained and sick and weary with the wallow of the ship, Glad to smell the turf again, hear the robin's call, Tread again the country road they lost at Montreal!

Fate may bring them dule and woe; better steeds than they Sleep beside the English guns a hundred leagues away; But till war hath need of them, lightly lie their reins, Softly fall the feet of them along the English lanes.

Will H. Ogilvie

THE KAISER AND BELGIUM

He said: "Thou petty people, let me pass. What canst thou do but bow to me and kneel?" But sudden a dry land caught fire like grass, And answer hurtled but from shell and steel.

He looked for silence, but a thunder came Upon him, from Liège a leaden hail. All Belgium flew up at his throat in flame Till at her gates amazed his legions quail.

Take heed, for now on haunted ground they tread; There bowed a mightier war lord to his fall: Fear! lest that very green grass again grow red With blood of German now as then with Gaul.

If him whom God destroys He maddens first, Then thy destruction slake thy madman's thirst.

Stephen Phillips

THE BATTLE OF LIÈGE