But most he loved to lie upon Lorette

And, couched on cornflowers, gaze across the lines

At Vimy's heights—we had not Vimy yet—

Pale Souchez's bones and Lens among the mines,

The tall pit-towers and dusky heaps of slag,

Until, like eagles on the mountain-crag

By strangers stirred, with hoarse indignant shrieks

Gunners emerged from some deep-delvéd lair

To chase the intruder from their sacred peaks

And cast him down to Ablain St. Nazaire.

And rumour said he roamed the rearward ways

In quiet seasons when no battle brewed;

The transport, homing through the evening haze,

Had seen and carried him, and given him food;

And he would leave them at Bethune canteen

Or some hot drinking-house at Noeux-les-Mines,

Where he would sit with wine and eggs and bread

Till the swart minions of the A.P.M.

Stole in and called for him, but found him fled

Out at the back. He was too much for them.

Too much. And surely thou shalt e'er be so;

No hungry discipline shall starve thy soul;

Shalt freely foot it where the poppies blow,

Shalt fight unfettered when the cannon roll,

And haply, Wanderer, when the hosts go home,

Thou only still in Aveluy shalt roam,

Haunting the crumbled windmill at Gavrelle

And fling thy bombs across the silent lea,

Drink with shy peasants at St. Catherine's Well

And in the dusk go home with them to tea.