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.