Peace lingers hidden from the knife, the tear-
     ing blinding shell,
Where falls the spattered sunlight on a lichen-
     covered well. 
No voice is here, no fall of feet, no smoke lifts
     cool and grey,
But on the granite stoop a cat blinks vaguely
     at the day. 
       From hill to hill across the vale
       Storms man’s terrific iron gale;
The cot roof on a brooding dove recks not the
     distant gun. 
A brown hen scolds her chickens chasing
     midges in the sun.

Now down the eastward slope they come. 
No call of life, no beat of drum,
But stealthily, and in the green,
Low hid, with rifle and machine,
Spit hate and death; and red blood flows
To shame the whiteness of the rose.

Crack followes crash; the bestial roar
Of gastly and insensate war
Breaks on the cot.  A rending stoke,
The red roof springs, and in the smoke
And spume of shells the riven walls
Pile where the splintered elm-tree spawls.

From westward, streaming down hill,
Shot-ravaged, thinned, but urgent still,
The brown, fierce, blooded Anzacs sweep,
And Hell leaps a up.  The lilies weep
Strange crimson tears.  Tight-lipped and mute,
The grim, gaunt soldiers stab and shoot.

It passes.  Frantic, fleeing death,
Wild-eyed, foam-flecked and every breath
A labored agony, like deer
That feel the hounds’ keen teeth, appear
The Prussian men, and, wild to slay
The hunters press upon their prey.

Cries fade and fitful shots die down.  The
     Tumbled ruin now
Smoke faintly in the summer light, and lifts
     The trodden bough. 
A sigh stirs in the trampled green, and held
     And tainted red
The rill creeps o’er a dead man’s face and
     steals along its bed. 
       One deep among the lilacs thrown
       Shock all the stillness with a moan. 
Peace like the snowflake lights again where
     utter silence lies,
And softly with white finger-tips she seals a
     soldier eyes.

THE LETTERS OF THE DEAD.

A letter came from Dick to-day;
   A greeting glad he sends to me. 
He tells of one more bloody fray—­
Of how with bomb and rifle they
   Have put their mark for all to see
   Across rock-ribbed Gallipoli.

“How are you doing?  Hope all’s well,
   I in great nick, and like the work. 
Though there may be a brimstone smell,
And other pungent hints of Hell,
   Not Satan’s self can make us shirk
   Our task of hitting up the Turk.

“You bet old Slacks is not half bad
   He knows his business in a scrim. 
He gets cold steel, or we are glad
To stop him with a bullet, lad. 
   Or sling a bomb his hair to trim;
   But, straight, we throw no mud at him.

“He fights and falls, and comes again,
   And knocks our charging lines about. 
He’s game at heart, and tough in grain,
And canters through the leaded rain,
   Chock full of mettle—­not a doubt
   ’T will do us proud to put him out.