Before our trenches at Cambrai <br />We saw their columns cringe away. <br />We saw their masses melt and reel <br />Before our line of leaping steel. <br /> <br />A handful to their storming hordes, <br />We scourged them with the scourge of swords, <br />And still, the more we slew, the more <br />Came up for every slain a score. <br /> <br />Between the hedges and the town <br />The cursing squadrons we rode down; <br />To stay them we outpoured our blood <br />Between the beetfields and the wood. <br /> <br />In that red hell of shrieking shell <br />Unfaltering our gunners fell; <br />They fell, or ere that day was done, <br />Beside the last unshattered gun. <br /> <br />But still we held them, like a wall <br />On which the breakers vainly fall– <br />Till came the word, and we obeyed, <br />Reluctant, bleeding, undismayed. <br /> <br />Our feet, astonished, learned retreat; <br />Our souls rejected still defeat; <br />Unbroken still, a lion at bay, <br />We drew back grimly from Cambrai. <br /> <br />In blood and sweat, with slaughter spent, <br />They thought us beaten as we went, <br />Till suddenly we turned, and smote <br />The shout of triumph in their throat. <br /> <br />At last, at last we turned and stood– <br />And Marne's fair water ran with blood; <br />We stood by trench and steel and gun, <br />For now the indignant flight was done. <br /> <br />We ploughed their shaken ranks with fire, <br />We trod their masses into mire; <br />Our sabres drove through their retreat <br />As drives the whirlwind through young wheat. <br /> <br />At last, at last we drove them back <br />Along their drenched and smoking track; <br />We hurled them back, in blood and flame, <br />The reeking ways by which they came. <br /> <br />By cumbered road and desperate ford <br />How fled their shamed and harassed horde! <br />Shout, Sons of Freemen, for the day <br />When Marne so well avenged Cambrai!<br /><br />Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/cambrai-and-marne/
