The West Front

No country know I so well
as this landscape of hell.
Why bring you to my pain
these shadow’d effigys
Of barb’d wire, riven trees,
the corpse-strewn blasted plain?

And the names--Hebuterne
Bethune and La Bassée--
I have nothing to learn--
Contalmaison, Boisselle,
And one where night and day
my heart would pray and dwell;

A desert sanctuary,
where in holy vigil
Year-long I have held my faith
against th’ imaginings
Of horror and agony
in an ordeal above

The tears of suffering
and took aid of angels:
This was the temple of God:
no mortuary of kings
Ever gathered the spoils
of such chivalry and love:

No pilgrim shrine soe’er
hath assembled such prayer--
With rich incense-wafted
ritual and requiem
Not beauteous batter’d Rheims
nor lorn Jerusalem.