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Robert Laurence Binyon - At Rheims
Work rating: Low

Their hearts were burning in their breasts
 Too hot for curse or cries.
 They stared upon the towers that burned
 Before their smarting eyes.

 There where, since France began to be,
 Anointed kings knelt down,
 There where the Maid, the unafraid,
 Received her vision`s crown,

 The senseless shell with nightmare scream
 Burst, and fair fragments fell
 Torn from their centuries of peace
 As by the rage of hell.

 What help for wrath, what use for wail?
 Before a dumb despair
 All ancient, high, heroic France
 Seemed burning, bleeding there.

 Within, the pillars soar to gloom
 Lit by the glimmering Rose;
 Spirits of beauty shrined in stone
 Afar from mortal woes,

 Hearing not, though their haunted shade
 Is stricken, and all around
 With splintering flash and brutal crash
 The ghostly aisles resound.

 And there, upon the pavement stretched,
 The German wounded groan
 To see the dropping flames of death
 And feel the shells their own.

 Too fierce the fire! Helped by their foes
 They stagger out to air.
 The green--grey coats are seen, are known
 Through all the crowded square.

 Ah, now for vengeance! Deep the groan:
 A death--knell! Quietly
 Soldiers unsling their rifles, lift
 And aim with steady eye.

 But sudden in the hush between
 Death and the doomed, there stands
 Against those levelled guns a priest,
 Gentle, with outstretched hands.

 Be not as guilty as they! he cries ...
 Each lets his weapon fall,
 As if a vision showed him France
 And vengeance vain and small.
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