We marched, and saw a company of Canadians <br />Their coats weighed eighty pounds at least, we saw them <br />Faces infinitely grimed in, with almost dead hands <br />Bent, slouching downwards to billets comfortless and dim. <br />Cave dwellers last of tribes they seemed, and a pity <br />Even from us just relieved (much as they were), left us. <br />Somme, what a desolation's damned land, what iniquity <br />Of mere being. There of what youth that country bereft us; <br />Plagues of evil lay in Death's Valley we also had .' <br />Forded that up to the thighs in chill mud almost still-stood <br />As they had gone — and endured day as night without sun. <br />Gone for five days then any sign of life glow <br />As the notched stumps or the gray clouds (then) we stood; <br />Dead past death from first hour and the needed mood <br />Of level pain shifting continually to and fro. <br />Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec, Stewart White ran in <br />My own mind; what in others? These men who finely <br />perhaps had chosen danger for reckless and fine chance <br />Fate had sent for suffering and dwelling obscenely <br />Vermin eaten, fed beastly, in vile ditches meanly. <br />(Backwoods or clean Quebec for defiled, ruined, man-killing France <br />And the silver thrush no more crying Canada — Canada for the memory.<br /><br />Ivor Gurney<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/canadians-4/
