I walked in loamy Wessex lanes, afar

From rail-track and from highway, and I heard

In field and farmstead many an ancient word

Of local lineage like “Thu bist,” “Er war,”

“Ich woll,” “Er sholl,” and by-talk similar,

Nigh as they speak who in this month’s moon gird

At England’s very loins, thereunto spurred

By gangs whose glory threats and slaughters are.

Then seemed a Heart crying: “Whosoever they be

At root and bottom of this, who flung this flame

Between kin folk kin tongued even as are we,

“Sinister, ugly, lurid, be their fame;

May their familiars grow to shun their name,

And their brood perish everlastingly.”

April 1915.