��III
The straight flagged road breaks into dust, into a
thin white cloud, About the feet of a regiment driven back league by
league, Rifles at trail, and standards wrapped in black
funeral cloths. Unhasting, proud in retreat, They smile as the Red Cross Ambulance rushes by. (You know nothing of beauty and of desolation who
have not seen That smile of an army in retreat.) They go : and our shining, beckoning danger goes
with them, And our jo\- in the harvests that we gathered in at
nightfall in the fields; And like an unloved hand laid on a beating heart Our safety weighs us down.
Safety hard and strange ; stranger and yet more hard As, league after dying league, the beautiful, desolate
Land Falls back from the intolerable speed of an Ambu- lance in retreat On the sacred, dolorous Way.
— May Siriclair.
�� �
