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Edward Dyson - Battle Passes
Work rating: Low

A quaint old gabled cottage sleeps be- 
     tween the raving hills. 
To right and left are livid strife, but on the 
     deep, wide sills 
The purple pot-flowers swell and glow, and 
     o`er the walls and eaves 
Prinked creeper steals caressing hands, the 
     poplar drips its leaves. 
       Within the garden hot and sweet 
       Fair form and woven color meet, 
While down the clear, cool stones, `tween 
     banks with branch and blossom gay, 
A little, bridged, blind rivulet goes touching 
     out its way. 

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.
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