free-verse50 lines

L'Envoi

by Robert William Service

My job is done; my rhymes are ranked and ready,

My word-battalions marching verse by verse;

Here stanza-companies are none too steady;

There print-platoons are weak, but might be worse.

And as in marshalled order I review them,

My type-brigades, unfearful of the fray,

My eyes that seek their faults are seeing through them

Immortal visions of an epic day.

It seems I'm in a giant bowling-alley;

The hidden heavies round me crash and thud;

A spire snaps like a pipe-stem in the valley;

The rising sun is like a ball of blood.

Along the road the "fantassins" are pouring,

And some are gay as fire, and some steel-stern. . . .

Then back again I see the red tide pouring,

Along the reeking road from Hebuterne.

And once again I seek Hill Sixty-Seven,

The Hun lines grey and peaceful in my sight;

When suddenly the rosy air is riven -

A "coal-box" blots the "boyou" on my right.

Or else to evil Carnoy I am stealing,

Past sentinels who hail with bated breath;

Where not a cigarette spark's dim revealing

May hint our mission in that zone of death.

I see across the shrapnel-seeded meadows

The jagged rubble-heap of La Boiselle;

Blood-guilty Fricourt brooding in the shadows,

And Thiepval's chateau empty as a shell.

Down Albert's riven streets the moon is leering;

The Hanging Virgin takes its bitter ray;

And all the road from Hamel I am hearing

The silver rage of bugles over Bray.

Once more within the sky's deep sapphire hollow

I sight a swimming Taube, a fairy thing;

I watch the angry shell flame flash and follow

In feather puffs that flick a tilted wing;

And then it fades, with shrapnel mirror's flashing;

The flashes bloom to blossoms lily gold;

The batteries are rancorously crashing,

And life is just as full as it can hold.

Oh spacious days of glory and of grieving!

Oh sounding hours of lustre and of loss!

Let us be glad we lived you, still believing

The God who gave the cannon gave the Cross.

Let us be sure amid these seething passions,

The lusts of blood and hate our souls abhor:

The Power that Order out of Chaos fashions

Smites fiercest in the wrath-red forge of War. . . .

Have faith! Fight on! Amid the battle-hell

Love triumphs, Freedom beacons, all is well.