<html xmlns:tei="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0"><body><h1 align="center" class="head">"On Les Aura!"</h1><div class="stanza"><p class="subhead"><span class="smallcaps">Soldat</span> J<span class="smallcaps">acques Bonhomme loquitur</span>:</p><p class="line">See you that stretch of shell-torn mud spotted with pools of mire,</p><p class="line">Crossed by a burst abandoned trench and tortured strands of wire,</p><p class="line">Where splintered pickets reel and sag and leprous trench-rats play,</p><p class="line">That scour the Devil's hunting-ground to seek their carrion prey?</p><p class="line">That is the field my father loved, the field that once was mine,</p><p class="line">The land I nursed for my child's child as my fathers did long syne.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">See there a mound of powdered stones, all flattened, smashed, and torn,</p><p class="line">Gone black with damp and green with slime? -- Ere you and I were born</p><p class="line">My father's father built a house, a little house and bare,</p><p class="line">And there I brought my woman home -- that heap of rubble there!</p><p class="line">The soil of France! Fat fields and green that bred my blood and bone!</p><p class="line">Each wound that scars my bosom's pride burns deeper than my own.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">But yet there is one thing to say -- one thing that pays for all,</p><p class="line">Whatever lot our bodies know, whatever fate befall,</p><p class="line">We hold the line! We hold it still! My fields are No Man's Land,</p><p class="line">But the good God is debonair and holds us by the hand.</p><p class="line"><em>"On les aura!"</em> See there! and there! soaked heaps of huddled grey!</p><p class="line">My fields shall laugh -- enriched by those who sought them for a prey.</p></div><p class="byline">James H. Knight-Adkin</p></body></html> · Great War