AUSTRALIA AT WAR
A WINTER RECORD
MADE BY
WILL DYSON
ON THE SOMME AND AT YPRES
During the Campaigns of 1916 and 1917
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
G. K. CHESTERTON
CECIL PALMER & HAYWARD
Oakley House Bloomsbury Street
LONDON W.C. 1
FIRST
EDITION
:1918:
COPY-
RIGHT
CAHILL & CO., LTD., PRINTERS, LONDON AND DUBLIN.
DEDICATION
TO THE MEN OF THE A.I.F.
To you who tread that dire itinerary
Who go like pedlars down the routes of Death,
Grey in its bloody traffic, but who gaze
Inured upon its scarlet merchandise
With eyes too young to have yet wholly shed
The pity moving roundness of the child—
TO THE MEN OF THE A.I.F.
To you who tread that dire itinerary
Who go like pedlars down the routes of Death,
Grey in its bloody traffic, but who gaze
Inured upon its scarlet merchandise
With eyes too young to have yet wholly shed
The pity moving roundness of the child—
To you, like cave men rough-hewn of the mud,
Housed in a world made primal mud again,
With terrors of that legendary past,
Reborn to iron palpability,
Roaring upon the earth with every wind—
Housed in a world made primal mud again,
With terrors of that legendary past,
Reborn to iron palpability,
Roaring upon the earth with every wind—
To you who go to do the work of wolves
Burdened like mules, and bandying with Death—
To hide the silent places of the soul—
The ribald jests that half convince the blind
It does not wholly anguish you to die—
Burdened like mules, and bandying with Death—
To hide the silent places of the soul—
The ribald jests that half convince the blind
It does not wholly anguish you to die—
To you who through those days upon the Somme,
About you still the odours of our bush,
I saw come down, with eyes like tired mares,
Along the jamming traffic of Mametz,
Creep
About you still the odours of our bush,
I saw come down, with eyes like tired mares,
Along the jamming traffic of Mametz,
Creep
...