Volume 156 — THE SWANS OF YPRES.

Ypres was once a weaving town, Where merchants jostled up and down And merry shuttles used to ply; On the looms the fleeces were Brought from the mart at Winchester, And silver flax from Burgundy. Who is weaving there to-night? Only the moon, whose shuttle white Makes silver warp on dyke and pond; Her hands fling veils of lily-woof On riven spire and open roof And on the haggard marsh beyond. No happy ghosts or fairies haunt The ancient city, huddling gaunt, Where waggons crawl with anxious wheel And o'er the marshland desolate Win slowly to the battered gate That Flemings call the Gate of Lille. Yet by some wonder it befalls That, where the lonely outer walls Brood in the silent pool below, Among the sedges of the moat, Like lilies furled, the two swans float; "The Swans of Ypres" men call them now. They have heard guns and many men Come and depart and come again, They have seen strange disastrous things, When fire and fume rolled o'er their nest; But changeless and aloof they rest, The Swans of Ypres, with folded wings.