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I THE ROAD that runs up to Messines | |
| Is double-locked with gates of fire, | |
| Barred with high ramparts, and between | |
| The unbridged river, and the wire. | |
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| None ever goes up to Messines, | 5 |
| For Death lurks all about the town, | |
| Death holds the vale as his demesne, | |
| And only Death moves up and down. | |
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II Choked with wild weeds, and overgrown | |
| With rank grass, all torn and rent | 10 |
| By war’s opposing engines, strewn | |
| With débris from each day’s event! | |
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| And in the dark the broken trees, | |
| Whose arching boughs were once its shade | |
| Grim and distorted, ghostly ease | 15 |
| In groans their souls vexed and afraid. | |
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| Yet here the farmer drove his cart, | |
| Here friendly folk would meet and pass, | |
| Here bore the good wife eggs to mart | |
| And old and young walked up to Mass. | 20 |
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| Here schoolboys lingered in the way, | |
| Here the bent packman laboured by, | |
| And lovers at the end o’ the day | |
| Whispered their secret blushingly. | |
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| A goodly road for simple needs, | 25 |
| An avenue to praise and paint, | |
| Kept by fair use from wreck and weeds, | |
| Blessed by the shrine of its own saint. | |
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III The road that runs up to Messines! | |
| Ah, how we guard it day and night! | 30 |
| And how they guard it, who o’erween | |
| A stricken people, with their might! | |
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| But we shall go up to Messines | |
| Even thro’ that fire-defended gate. | |
| Over and thro’ all else between | 35 |
| And give the highway back its state. | |
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