He'll spin you yarns from dawn to dark-and half of 'em are true! He swears in a score of languages, and maybe talks in two! And * * * he'll lower a boat in a hurricane to save a drowning crew. A rough job or a tough job-he's handled two or threeAnd what or where he won't much care, nor ask what * be may the risk * For a tight place is the right place when it's wild weather at sea! -C. Fox SMITH. LANGEMARCK AT YPRES This is the ballad of Langemarck, A story of glory and might; Of the vast Hun horde, and Canada's part It was April fair on the Flanders Fields, That ever the years, in their fateful flight, North and east, a monster wall, The mighty Hun ranks lay, With fort on fort, and iron-ringed trench, Menacing, grim and gray. And south and west, like a serpent of fire, Serried the British lines, And in between, the dying and dead, And the stench of blood, and the trampled mud, On the fair, sweet Belgian vines. And far to the eastward, harnessed and taut, When out of the grim Hun lines one night, There rolled a sinister smoke ; A strange, weird cloud, like a pale, green shroud, And death lurked in its cloak. On a fiend-like wind it curled along In hideous, burning banks Of poisonous fumes that scorched the night And men went mad with horror, and fled Till even the little dark men of the south, Those fierce, wild fighters of Afric's steppes, Ran as they never had run before, Gasping, and fainting for breath; For they knew 't was no human foe that slew; And that hideous smoke meant death. Then red in the reek of that evil cloud, And the murderer's dirk did its monster work, Till it seemed that at last the brute Hun hordes Had broken that wall of steel; And that soon, through this breach in the freeman's dyke, His trampling hosts would wheel;— And sweep to the south in ravaging might, And Europe's peoples again Be trodden under the tyrant's heel, But in that line on the British right, Of men who hailed from a far west land Men new to war and its dreadest deeds, These were the men out there that night, Who saw that pitiful, hideous rout, And breathed those gases dread; While some went under and some went mad; But never a man there fled. For the word was "Canada," theirs to fight, And keep on fighting still; Britain said, fight, and fight they would, Though the Devil himself in sulphurous mood Came over that hideous hill. Yea, stubborn, they stood, that hero band, For five, 'gainst eighty thousand men, Yea, fought they on! "T was Friday eve, Sunday, Monday, saw them yet, Where mother and sister and love would weep But never a thought but to do their part, Ringed round, hemmed in, and back to back, Wonderful battles have shaken this world, Bannockburn, Inkerman, Balaclava, This is the ballad of Langemarck, Of the vast Hun horde, and Canada's part Dropped dead beside me in the trench-and three Back from the trenches, more dead than alive, |