Classic Poem

We marched, and saw a company of Canadians,
Their coats weighed eighty pounds at least, we saw them
Faces infinitely grimed in, with almost dead hands
Bent, slouching downwards to billets comfortless and dim.
Cave dwellers last of tribes they seemed, and a pity
Even from us just relieved, much as they were, left us.
Lord, what a land of desolation, what iniquity
Of mere being, of what youth that country bereft us;
Plagues of evil lay in Death's Valley, we also
Had forded that up to the thighs in chill mud,
Gone for five days then any sign of life glow,
As the notched stumps or the grey clouds we stood
Dead past death from first hour and the needed mood
Of level pain shifting continually to and fro.
Saskatchewan, Ontario, Jack London ran in
My own mind; what in others? these men who finely
Perhaps had chosen danger for reckless and fine,
Fate had sent for suffering and dwelling obscenely
Vermin-eaten, fed beastly, in vile ditches meanly.