("In the evening I went for a walk to a village lately shelled by German heavy guns. Their effect was awful—ghastly. It was impossible to imagine the amount of damage done until one really saw it. The church was terrible too. The spire was sticking upside down in the ground a short distance from the door. The church itself was a mass of debris. Scarcely anything was left unhit. In the churchyard again the destruction was terrific—tombstones thrown all over the place. But the most noticeable thing of all was that the three Crucifixes—one inside and two outside—were untouched! How they can have avoided the shelling is quite beyond me. It was a wonderful sight though an awful one. There were holes in the churchyard about fifteen feet across."—From a letter from my boy at the Front.)
The churchyard stones all blasted into shreds,
The dead re-slain within their lowly beds,—
THE CROSS STILL STANDS!
His holy ground all cratered and crevassed,
All flailed to fragments by the fiery blast,—
THE CROSS STILL STANDS!
His church a blackened ruin, scarce one stone
Left on another,—yet, untouched alone,—
THE CROSS STILL STANDS!
His shrines o’erthrown, His altars desecrate,
His priests the victims of a pagan hate,—
THE CROSS STILL STANDS!
'Mid all the horrors of the reddened ways,
The thund’rous nights, the dark and dreadful days,—
THE CROSS STILL STANDS!
* * * * *
And, 'mid the chaos of the Deadlier Strife,—
A Church at odds with its own self and life,—
HIS CROSS STILL STANDS!
Faith folds her wings, and Hope at times grows dim;
The world goes wandering away from Him;—
HIS CROSS STILL STANDS!
Love, with the lifted hands and thorn-crowned head,
Still conquers Death, though life itself be fled;—
HIS CROSS STILL STANDS!
Yes,—Love triumphant stands, and stands for more,
In our great need, than e’er it stood before!
HIS CROSS STILL STANDS!
