The herder leads the sheep afield, Where grasses grow o’er broken blade; And toil-worn women till the soil O’er human mold, in sunny glade. The splintered shell and bayonet Are lost in crumbling village wall; No sniper scans the rim of hills, No sentry hears the night bird call. From blood-wet soil and sunken trench, The flowers bloom in summer light; And farther down the vale beyond, The peasant smiles are sad, yet bright. The wounded Marne is growing green, The gash of Hun no longer smarts; Democracy is born again, But what about the troubled hearts? FRANK CARBAUGH, Sgt., Inf. (Written while lying wounded in hospital; died August, 1918.) A NURSE’S PRAYER O Lord, I must not cry, And yet mine eyes contain Such floods of scalding tears That they will never dry, Descending soft as rain, Through all the coming years. Cor Jesu, I must weep, When I behold the sight! These men who fought and bled, Who moan and cannot sleep, Their souls so snowy white, The wounded and the dead. THOMAS F. COAKLEY, Lt., Chaplain. LINES ON LEAVING A LITTLE TOWN WHERE WE RESTED We with the war ahead, You who have held the line, Laughing, have broken bread And taken wine. We cannot speak your tongue, We cannot fully know Things hid beneath your smile Four years ago. Things which have given us, Grimly, a common debt, Now that we take the field, We won’t forget! RUSSELL LORD, Corp., F. A. POPPIES Poppies in the wheat fields on the pleasant hills of France, Reddening in the summer breeze that bids them nod and dance; Over them the skylark sings his lilting, liquid tune— Poppies in the wheat fields, and all the world in June. Poppies in the wheat fields on the road to Monthiers— Hark, the spiteful rattle where the masked machine guns play! Over them the shrapnel’s song greets the summer morn— Poppies in the wheat fields—but, ah, the fields are torn. See the stalwart Yankee lads, never ones to blench, Poppies in their helmets as they clear the shallow trench, Leaping down the furrows with eager, boyish tread Through the poppied wheat fields to the flaming woods ahead.