THE VIRGIN OF ALBERT
Reading edition
(NOTRE DAME DE BREBIÈRES)
Shyly expectant, gazing up at Her, They linger, Gaul and Briton, side by side: Death they know well, for daily have they died, Spending their boyhood ever bravelier; They wait: here is no priest or chorister, Birds skirt the stricken tower, terrified; Desolate, empty, is the Eastertide, Yet still they wait, watching the Babe and Her.
Broken, the Mother stoops: the brutish foe Hurled with dull hate his bolts, and down She swayed, Down, till She saw the toiling swarms below,— Platoons, guns, transports, endlessly arrayed: "Women are woe for them! let Me be theirs, And comfort them, and hearken all their prayers!"
George Herbert Clarke