They stood beneath the Menin Gate

All gathered to commemorate

The engraved names and all their ghosts

Countless lines of long-gone hosts.

 

The sacks of sacrificial soil

Collected by young children's toil

Were held out to be carried home

To where the dead could never roam.

 

Carefully placed upon the bier

A gun carriage offered waiting near,

Its horses quiet as if t'were known

They had dead forebears of their own.

 

And when at last that holy train

Set out to journey back again

It seemed that countless voices cried

"We're going home across the tide".

 

Horseshoes rang on Belgian stone

Recalling those - known and unknown;

Men and horses gone before,

Remembered comrades, lost to war.

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