# More songs by the fighting men. Soldiers poets: second series/Ernest K. Challenger

ERNEST K. CHALLENGER
Corporal, R.E.
The Harvest
SHADOWLESS lies the land Under the sun, Only the poplars stand With moveless boughs in the heat That broods o'er the blackened wheat And the ground so hardly won.
No other tree in the waste. They only stand Where the straight white road is traced Athwart the land. And ever under the sky Do the slow-winged birds go by— The slow black birds of prey That wait but the close of day For the night to bring them food.
The curse of the heat is here, And the curse of blood. Cold-lipped, and with eyes of fear, 'Neath the sun's flood ​Wanders the spirit of death; And e'en in the burning noon is an icy breath And the red of the west is to me like the redness of blood.
The village is still as the heat, From the ruined houses start The rats across the street.— There is never another sound, For the guns are silent to-day, And the endless lines of men that are bound For the place of death and the nameless mound Have taken another way.
At the end of the ruined street Roodless the church yet stands To the God men praise with their lips While they mock Him with their hands; With hands that have scrawled for sport Their jests on the altar-stone, And their ribald words on the lips of Christ, The marred Christ hanging alone.
Who has measured pain, And who has a plumb for that sea Where the soul shall know again Its own immensity? ​For the voice of the mind is dumb, But the voice of the soul is heard, Where the wild dark waters are come And the face of man's sky is blurred.
Who shall say "Lo here Shall the glory of war be found, That a nation arose without fear And smote her foe to the ground For the wrong that he dared to dream, And the hell that he wrought on earth; That she pressed after Honour's gleam Though it led to a land of dearth"?
Who has measured wrong, And who shall assign it a bond? Where the scornful might of the strong And the cry of the weak be found— Say, is the tale complete? Ah! myriad wrongs spring up Where one has set its feet, And the earth is a poisoned cup Where the goodly wine brings death, And one drop of venom there Shall poison the very breath Of the winds in the upper air.
​What of the men who died Stout-hearted and steadfast-eyed For the good they might not share And the goal to them denied? For the lamp they strove to bear Should light another's way, And the boon that they might not share Is the boon we hold to-day.
What of the god-like men Who lie in the dust to-day For the dreams that we hold so light And the hope that we fling away? Ah! shall we not vex their sleep, We men of the lesser mould, Who sully the name they bled to keep, And the honour they died to hold?
A thousand ages ago Man fought with the axe of stone That the many might seize the thing they loved From the few, and hold it alone. For the will of the strong was law And the right of the weak was death When man was one with the beasts of the earth And battled with them for breath.
​And to-day with their coward lips Men prate of love in their creeds, And a thousand times to-day Do they spurn her with their deeds. For we talk of the law of truth While our God is the law of might, And the will of the strongest there Is the thing we hold as right.
What have we gained with the years, But the greater power to lie? We, who speak of the truth, Smooth-voiced and with side-long eye; Better the axe of stone And the feet on the weakest throat Than the lying lips and the coward thrust And the stealthy eyes that gloat.
Now for the one's desire Shall the many be crucified On the cross of a lawless power With the nails of a soulless pride. And the wrong goes deeper yet, Aye, deep as the springs of life, And has blossomed out at the 'hest of pride In the deadly flower of strife.
​And nothing shall purge the land Where the curse of sin has stood But the purge of the whetted steel And the drench of blood. While perchance at the end shall Peace Her impotent pinions spread O'er the ruined home and the smoking land And the blank eyes of our dead.
Hark!—through the lazy air Comes the sound of guns again. Once more man reaps with a sickle of fire The harvest of the slain.
Pont d'Essars, France.