<html xmlns:tei="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0"><body><h1 align="center" class="head">Field Ambulance in Retreat</h1><h1 align="center" class="head"><em>Via Dolorosa, Via Sacra</em></h1><div class="stanza"><p class="subhead">I</p><p class="line">A <span class="smallcaps">straight</span> flagged road, laid on the rough earth,</p><p class="line">A causeway of stone from beautiful city to city,</p><p class="line">Between the tall trees, the slender, delicate trees,</p><p class="line">Through the flat green land, by plots of flowers, by black canals thick with heat.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="subhead">II</p><p class="line">The road-makers made it well</p><p class="line">Of fine stone, strong for the feet of the oxen and of the great Flemish horses,</p><p class="line">And for the high wagons piled with corn from the harvest.</p><p class="line">And the laborers are few;</p><p class="line">They and their quiet oxen stand aside and wait</p><p class="line">By the long road loud with the passing of the guns, the rush of armored cars and the tramp of an army on the march forward to battle;</p><p class="line">And, where the piled corn-wagons went, our dripping Ambulance carries home</p><p class="line">Its red and white harvest from the fields.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="subhead">III</p><p class="line">The straight flagged road breaks into dust, into a thin white cloud,</p><p class="line">About the feet of a regiment driven back league by league,</p><p class="line">Rifles at trail, and standards wrapped in black funeral cloths. Unhasting, proud in retreat,</p><p class="line">They smile as the Red Cross Ambulance rushes by.</p><p class="line">(You know nothing of beauty and of desolation who have not seen</p><p class="line">That smile of an army in retreat.)</p><p class="line">They go: and our shining, beckoning danger goes with them,</p><p class="line">And our joy in the harvests that we gathered in at nightfall in the fields;</p><p class="line">And like an unloved hand laid on a beating heart</p><p class="line">Our safety weighs us down.</p><p class="line">Safety hard and strange; stranger and yet more hard</p><p class="line">As, league after dying league, the beautiful, desolate Land</p><p class="line">Falls back from the intolerable speed of an Ambulance in retreat</p><p class="line">On the sacred, dolorous Way.</p></div><p class="byline">-- May Sinclair.</p></body></html> · Great War