Why paused they and went backward,
With never a foe before,
Like a long wave dragging
Down a level shore
Its fierce reluctant surges, that came triumphant storming
The land, and powers invisible drive to its deep returning?
On the grey field of Flanders again and yet again
The Huns beheld the Great Reserves on the old battle-plain,
The blood-red field of Flanders, where all the skies were mourning.
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 glacés—
And the young, young dead from Mons and the Marne river.
Old heroic fighting men
Who fought for chivalry,
Men who died for England,
Mother of Liberty,