A SONG of VICTORY.
Yes, it was all like a garden glowing
When first we came to the hill-top there,
And we laughed to know that the Bosch was going,
And laughed to know that the land was fair;
Acre by acre of green fields sleeping,
Hamlets hid in the tufts of wood,
And out of the trees were church-towers peeping,
And away on a hillock the Windmill stood.
_Then, ah then, 'twas a land worth winning,
And now there is naught but the naked clay,
But I can remember the Windmill spinning,
And the four sails shone in the sun that day._
But the guns came after and tore the hedges
And stripped the spinneys and churned the plain,
And a man walks now on the windy ledges
And looks for a feather of green in vain;
Acre by acre the sad eye traces
The rust-red bones of the earth laid bare,
And the sign-posts stand in the market-places
To say that a village was builded there.
_But better the French fields stark and dying
Than ripe for a conqueror's fat content,
And I can remember the mill-sails flying,
Yet I cheered with the rest when the Windmill went._
Away to the East the grass-land surges
Acre by acre across the line,
And we must go on till the end like scourges,
Though the wilderness stretch from sea to Rhine;
But I dream some days of a great reveille,
When the buds shall burst in the Blasted Wood,
And the children chatter in Death-Trap Alley,
And a windmill stand where the Windmill stood.
_And we that remember the Windmill spinning.
We may go under, but not in vain,
For our sons shall come in the new beginning
And see that the Windmill spins again._
A. P. HERBERT.
April 10, 1918.