Page:Canadian poems of the great war.djvu/96

And when on the side of Justice, Victory takes her stand,
And a pallid peace is brooding over a broken land,
We shall count the cost but little, glad of the chance to pay
For a stronger chain of Empire, and the dawn of a better day.

Go forth, O Mother of Nations, to the battle of Right and Wrong,
In the strength of your young Dominions, to the sound of their battle-song.

OUT there, the salt spray whips
The blood from frozen faces and dumb lips;
Young eyes grow old with watching, hair turns white,
In the long vigils of the North Sea night;
And the white crest of every curling wave
Is the grim headstone of a sailor s grave.

For those who sweep the Seven Seas,
Lord of the Deep, we pray!
If theirs be the Sum of Sacrifice
Grant us the Right to Pay.

Out there, grim fragments lie
In awful heaps beneath the leaden sky,
And Noise unceasing stuns the reeling brain;
Colder than Death, the bullet’s sharper pain
Unheeded passes, and with scarce a moan
Young lives go out in the dark, alone.

For those who suffer Death in Life,
Lord God of Hosts, we pray !
If theirs be the Sum of Sacrifice,
Grant us the Right to pay.