LITMIR.BIZ

      Wooden Crosses

       Table of Contents

      (1917)

      "Go live the wide world over—but when you come to die,

       A quiet English churchyard is the only place to lie!"—

       I held it half a lifetime, until through war's mischance

       I saw the wooden crosses that fret the fields of France.

      A thrush sings in an oak-tree, and from the old square tower

       A chime as sweet and mellow salutes the idle hour:

       Stone crosses take no notice — but the little wooden ones

       Are thrilling every minute to the music of the guns!

      Upstanding at attention they face the cannonade,

       In apple-pie alinement like Guardsmen on parade:

       But Tombstones are Civilians who loll or sprawl or sway

       At every crazy angle and stage of slow decay.

      For them the Broken Column—in its plot of unkempt grass;

       The tawdry tinsel garland safeguarded under glass;

       And the Squire's emblazoned virtues, that would overweight a Saint,

       On the vault empaled in iron — scaling red for want of paint!

      The men who die for England don't need it rubbing in;

       An automatic stamper and a narrow strip of tin

       Record their date and regiment, their number and their name—

       And the Squire who dies for England is treated just the same.

      So stand the still battalions: alert, austere, serene;

       Each with his just allowance of brown earth shot with green;

       None better than his neighbour in pomp or circumstance —

       All beads upon the rosary that turned the fate of France!

      Who says their war is over? While others carry on,

       The little wooden crosses spell but the dead and gone?

       Not while they deck a sky-line, not while they crown a view,

       Or a living soldier sees them and sets his teeth anew!

      The tenants of the churchyard where the singing thrushes build

       Were not, perhaps, all paragons of promise well fulfilled:

       Some failed—through Love, or Liquor—while the parish looked askance.

       But—you cannot die a Failure if you win a Cross in France!

      The brightest gems of Valour in the Army's diadem

       Are the V.C. and the D.S.O., M.C. and D.C.M.

       But those who live to wear them will tell you they are dross

       Beside the Final Honour of a simple Wooden Cross.