An Incident At Cambrai

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