Battle-Retrospect, and Other Poems/Belleau

by Amos Niven Wilder

BELLEAU. JUNE 1, 1918.

In that fair month that saw the final stand,
When France was splintered and convulsed with throes,
As, in the armies of the black-helmed foes,
Chaos thrust forth his fingers o'er the land,
And as when seas encroach upon a strand,
Moved, an immeasurable flood of Night,
Across the spring, while men and beasts in flight
Avoided the dark terror close at hand;
We, bearing in us the decree of God,
The ne plus ultra to the mindless urge
Of the unordered universe, the surge
Of Chaos, to that shelving border trod,
Halted and turned the tide, and saw emerge
Again the flowering valleys from the flood.