10 
LAND cS: WATER 
The City of Fear 
Bv Gilbert Frankau 
May 4, i(ji6 
THIS was a city once : women lived here ; , 
Their voices were low to their lovers, o'nights by 
the muanuring waters ; 
Their hands were busied with home — mothers 
and daughters, ._.-- 
Sisters and wives : 
Now the shell dives 
To scatter anew the shattered remains of the homes 
that their hands made dear. 
Fear 
Walks naked at noonday's clear 
Where the shopman proffcared his wares to the loitering 
street, 
\\'here the Mass was read. 
Above. 
The war-blades beat 
And wliistle : and love 
And laughter and work and the hum ul the city arc 
utterly dead. 
Never a barge 
Ruffles the long canals : the lock-gates rot, 
Letting thin runnels spout : 
Never the plash of a rope in the reeds nor the pash of a 
hoof on the marge, 
Crack of whip, nor the shout 
Of driver gladdens the quiet : the foul weeds knot 
And strangle the sluggish flow of the waterway ; 
Slime of decay 
Clots on the banks where the shell-holes cut deep and 
the shored edges crumble, 
Clots on the piers of the bridges that echo to transport 
wheels' rumble 
At fall of the night 
When no Ught 
Is a-gleara — 
Till the sudden flame from a gun-mu^zlc crimsons the 
ebon glass of the stream. 
Here, where the rails 
Ran straight and gUttcring, linking city to teeming 
prosperous plain. 
Mist and the rain 
And long disuse have rusted the glint of the steel that 
the wheels made shining ; 
Flame and steel have twisted the steel from the lines of 
its fair designing ; 
Gold with grain. 
Shone the fields once, when the harvest of peacetime 
was ripe to the sun for the flails ; 
Green and red 
Gleamed the hghts once when the track was a-quiver, a-roar 
with the freight and the mail~-- 
But the life of tlic farm and the life of the field and llie 
traflic of peacetime arc utterly dead. 
The grey roads run 
Bare to the sun ; 
Not a cart 
Jingles in through the gates that our torn graves guard 
To the mart ; 
Never a peasant girl passes and smiles with raised eyes 
for a greeting. 
Never men clink at the cottage the cup of the wayfarers' 
meeting ; 
(Strown 
Into heaps by the roadside the cottages, blown 
And driven by shcll-firc, and scarred !) 
Only at night when the dank mists arise and the gaze of 
our watchers is hidden. 
Comes tramp and muttered cursing of infantry, rush of 
horse ridden 
In fear of the dark — 
For wlio knows how the far shell shall swerve or the blind 
bullet hiss to its mark I 
Roadway, water or rail, the hfe has died in the veins, 
As life is dead at the breast ; 
Only remains 
The hollow corpse of a city, slashed and gutted of war, 
A grinning skeleton-city, mocking the eye from afar 
With a hangman's jest — 
With tower and chimney and gable \shero scarcely 
swallows might rest. 
Look well, 
Ye that shall die as we died ! 
Is there roof of these roofs to guard your heads from the 
wind or the rain or the sun ? 
Is there wall unholed of the gun, 
Or street unpitted of shell ? 
Is there place where Man might abide .... 
Has the house he built for his scornful gods been proof 
'gainst the shafts of Hell ? 
Ruin is over it all, hideous, complete : 
Street upon street ; 
House upon house that was gay with tlic patter of lest 
children's feet. 
Whose windows were mirrors of lamp light to beckon its 
worker returning 
To welcome of arms and of eyes, to the warmth of the 
home-fire's bright burning ; 
Palace and cot — 
Their charred beams rot 
And their rent walls gape as they totter, betraying the 
havoc within — 
Iron and tin, 
Brickwork and stone, 
Glasswork and tilework and woodwork to refuse-heaps 
battered and spilt and o'erthrown. 
Through the storied square — 
Where aforetime the belfry spired 
In a moonbeam- fretted splendour of stone that was pride 
of a guild long dead. 
Where the glory of glass 
Was fired 
By the orange flames of a thousand candles .ablaze on 
altar and shrine, 
Till the quiet beauty of perfect things was warm to the 
soul as wine — 
Men pass 
Hurriedly, fearfully, quickening the footstep, barely 
averting the head 
To vision in dread 
A gleaming, terrible desert, pitfallcd with shadow- wells 
Blasted and bored by the shells, 
Jagged with rocks : — 
For the steel has stripped 
And ravished the splendours of graven stone, the ruby 
glory of glass. 
Till apse and gargoyle, buttress and nave, 
Rcredos, pillar, and crypt, 
Lie tumbled and crumbled to monstrous ruins of splinter- 
ing granite-blocks .... 
