,
your Lordship's most obedient servant,

J.D.P. FRENCH, Field Marshal, Commanding in Chief, the British Army in
the Field.

The Cathedral of Rheims

BY EMILE VERHAEREN

(From Les Bles Mouvants)

Done into English verse by Joyce Kilmer.

He who walks through the meadows of Champagne
At noon in Fall, when leaves like gold appear,
Sees it draw near
Like some great mountain set upon the plain,
From radiant dawn until the close of day,
Nearer it grows
To him who goes
Across the country. When tall towers lay
Their shadowy pall
Upon his way,
He enters, where
The solid stone is hollowed deep by all
Its centuries of beauty and of prayer.

Ancient French temple! thou whose hundred Kings
Watch over thee, emblazoned on thy walls,
Tell me, within thy memory-hallowed halls
What chant of triumph, or what war-song rings?
Thou hast known Clovis and his Frankish train,
Whose mighty hand Saint Remy's hand did keep
And in thy spacious vault perhaps may sleep
An echo of the voice of Charlemagne.
For God thou hast known fear, when from His side
Men wandered, seeking alien shrines and new,
But still the sky was bountiful and blue
And thou wast crowned with France's love and pride.
Sacred thou art, from pinnacle to base;
And in thy panes of gold and scarlet glass
The setting sun sees thousandfold his face;
Sorrow and joy, in stately silence pass
Across thy walls, the shadow and the light;
Around thy lofty pillars, tapers white
Illuminate, with delicate sharp flames,
The brows of saints with venerable names,
And in the night erect a fiery wall,
A great but silent fervor burns in all
Those simple folk who kneel, pathetic, dumb,
And know that down below, beside the Rhine--
Cannon, horses, soldiers, flags in line--
With blare of trumpets, mighty armies come.

Suddenly, each knows fear:
Swift rumors pass, that every one must hear,
The hostile banners blaze against the sky
And by the embassies mobs rage and cry.
Now war has come, and peace is at an end,
On Paris town the German troops descend.
They turned back, and driven to Champagne.
And now, as to so many weary men,
The glorious temple gives them welcome, when,
It meets them at the bottom of the plain.

At once, they set their cannon in its way.