Will Streets: A Soldiers’ Cemetery (Poem)

A Soldiers’ Cemetery

Behind that long and lonely trenchèd line
To which men come and go, where brave men die,
There is a yet unmarked and unknown shrine,
A broken plot, a soldiers’ cemet’ry.

There lie the flower of Youth, the men who scorned
To live (so died) when languished liberty:
Across their graves, flowerless and unadorned,
Still scream the shells of each artillery.

When war shall cease this lonely, unknown spot
Of many a pilgrimage will be the end,
And flowers will bloom in this now barren plot
And fame upon it through the years descend –
But many a heart upon each simple cross
Will hang the grief, the memory of its loss.

John William (Will) Streets
(1886 –1916)
A Soldiers’ Cemetery
• fleursdumal.nl magazine

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