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In
The Battle Silences: Poems Written At The Front
by
Frederick George Scott
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ON
THE RUE DU BOIS
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OPALLID
Christ within this broken shrine,
Now those torn Hands and not that Heart of Thine
Have given the nations blood to drink like wine.
Through weary years and ’neath the changing
skies,
Men turned their back on those appealing Eyes
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scorned as vain Thine awful Sacrifice.
Kings with their armies, children in their play,
Have passed unheeding down this shell-ploughed
way,
The great world knew not where its true strength
lay.
In pomp and luxury, in lust of gold,
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In selfish
ease, in pleasures manifold,
“Evil is good, good evil,” we were told.
Yet here, where nightly the great flare-lights
gleam,
And murder stalks triumphant in their beam,
The world has wakened from its empty dream.
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At last, O Christ, in this strange, darkened land,
Where ruined homes lie round on every hand,
Life’s deeper truths men come to understand.
For lonely graves along the country side,
Where sleep those brave hearts who for others
died
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of life’s union with the Crucified.
And new light kindles in the mourner’s
eyes,
Like day-dawn breaking through the rifted skies,
For Life is born of life’s self-sacrifice.
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SAILLY,
FRANCE.
1915.
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