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Robert Laurence Binyon - An Incident At Cambrai
Work rating: Low

In a by--street, blocked with rubble
 And any--way--tumbled stones,
 Between the upstanding house--fronts`
 Naked and scorched bones,

 Chinese workmen were clearing
 The ruins, dusty and arid.
 Dust whitened the motley coats,
 Where each his burden carried.

 Silent they glided, all
 Save one, who passed me by
 With berry--brown high--boned cheeks
 And strange Eastern eye.

 And he sang in his outland tongue
 Among those ruins drear
 A high, sad, half--choked ditty
 That no one heeded to hear.

 Was it love, was it grief, that made
 For long--dead lips that song?
 The desolation of Han
 Or the Never--Ending Wrong?

 The Rising Sun and the Setting,
 They have seen this all as a scroll
 Blood--smeared, that the endless years
 For the fame of men unroll.

 It was come from the ends of the earth
 And of Time in his ruin gray,
 That song,--the one human sound
 In the silence of Cambrai.
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