In a by--street, blocked with rubble <br />And any--way--tumbled stones, <br />Between the upstanding house--fronts' <br />Naked and scorched bones, <br /> <br />Chinese workmen were clearing <br />The ruins, dusty and arid. <br />Dust whitened the motley coats, <br />Where each his burden carried. <br /> <br />Silent they glided, all <br />Save one, who passed me by <br />With berry--brown high--boned cheeks <br />And strange Eastern eye. <br /> <br />And he sang in his outland tongue <br />Among those ruins drear <br />A high, sad, half--choked ditty <br />That no one heeded to hear. <br /> <br />Was it love, was it grief, that made <br />For long--dead lips that song? <br />The desolation of Han <br />Or the Never--Ending Wrong? <br /> <br />The Rising Sun and the Setting, <br />They have seen this all as a scroll <br />Blood--smeared, that the endless years <br />For the fame of men unroll. <br /> <br />It was come from the ends of the earth <br />And of Time in his ruin gray, <br />That song,--the one human sound <br />In the silence of Cambrai.<br /><br />Robert Laurence Binyon<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-incident-at-cambrai/
