# Two Hundred Years After

Trudging by Corbie Ridge one winter’s night,

(Unless old, hearsay memories tricked his sight),

Along the pallid edge of the quiet sky

He watched a nosing lorry grinding on,

And straggling files of men; when these were gone,

A double limber and six mules went by,

Hauling the rations up through ruts and mud

To trench-lines digged two hundred years ago.

Then darkness hid them with a rainy scud,

And soon he saw the village lights below.

But when he’d told his tale, an old man said

That he’d seen soldiers pass along that hill;

"Poor, silent things, they were the English dead

Who came to fight in France and got their fill."

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