Whom none could quell or decently constrain,
For he was turbulent and sometimes bad,
Yet, stout of heart, he dearly loved to fight,
And spoke his fellows on a gusty night
In some high barn, where, huddled in the straw,
They watched the cheap wicks gutter on the shelf,
How he was irked with discipline and law,
And would fare forth to battle by himself.

This said, he left them and returned no more;
But whispers passed from Vimy to Verdun,
Where'er the fields ran thickliest with gore,
Of some stray bomber that belonged to none,
But none more fierce or flung a fairer bomb,
Who ran unscathed the gamut of the Somme
And followed Freyberg up the Beaucourt mile
With uncouth cries and streaming muddy hair;
But after, when they sought his name and style
And would have honoured him--he was not there.

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.