Explore "Verses and Sonnets" by Hilaire Belloc on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I, from a window where the Meuse is wide, / Looked eastward out to the September night; / The men that in the hopeless battle died / Rose, and deployed, and stationed for the fight; / A brumal army, vague and ordered large / For mile on mile by some pale general; / I saw them lean by companies to the charge, / But no man living heard the bugle-call.
And fading still, and pointing to their scars, / They fled in lessening cloud, where gray and high / Dawn lay along the heaven in misty bars; / But watching from that eastern casement, I / Saw the Republic splendid in the sky, / And round her terrible head the morning stars.