THE WEST FRONT. AN ENGLISH MOTHER, ON LOOKING INTO MASEFIELD’S “OLD FRONT LINE.”

No country know I so well as this landscape of hell. Why bring you to my pain these shadow’d effigys Of barb’d wire, riven trees, the corpse-strewn blasted plain? And the names—Hebuterne Bethune and La Bassée— I have nothing to learn— Contalmaison, Boisselle, And one where night and day my heart would pray and dwell; A desert sanctuary, where in holy vigil Year-long I have held my faith against th’ imaginings Of horror and agony in an ordeal above The tears of suffering and took aid of angels: This was the temple of God: no mortuary of kings Ever gathered the spoils of such chivalry and love: No pilgrim shrine soe’er hath assembled such prayer— With rich incense-wafted ritual and requiem Not beauteous batter’d Rheims nor lorn Jerusalem.