Of Time. In dream I saw them go–And thought, ‘When they come back I’ll showTo what far place I lead my friendsWhere this disastrous decade ends.’Like one in purgatory, I learnedThe loss of hope. For none returned,And long in darkening dream I lay.Then came a ghost whose warning breathGasped from an agony of death,‘No, not…
A patient crowd along the sodden grass,Silent, worn out with waiting, sick with fear.The road goes crawling up a long hillside,All ruts and stones and sludge, and the emptied dregsOf battle thrown in heaps. Here where they diedAre stretched big-bellied horses with stiff legs,And dead men, bloody-fingered from the fight,Stare up at caverned darkness winking…
But shining as a garden; come with the streamingBanners of dawn and sundown after rain.I want to fill my gaze with blue and silver,Radiance through living roses, spires of greenRising in young-limbed copse and lovely wood,Where the hueless wind passes and cries unseen.I am not sad; only I long for lustre, —Tired of the greys…
Disconsolate men who stamp their sodden bootsAnd turn dulled, sunken faces to the skyHaggard and hopeless. They, who have beaten downThe stale despair of night, must now renewTheir desolation in the truce of dawn,Murdering the livid hours that grope for peace.Yet these, who cling to life with stubborn hands,Can grin through storms of death and…
Young Fusiliers, strong-legged and bold,March and wheel and march again.The sun looks over the barrack gate,Warm and white with glaring shine,To watch the soldiers of the LineThat life has hired to fight with fate.Fall out: the long parades are done.Up comes the dark; down goes the sun.The square is walled with windowed light.Sleep well, you…
For days he might have lived; but his young faceGazed forth untroubled: and suddenly there throngedRound him the hulking Germans that I shotWhen for his death my brooding rage was hot.He stared at them, half-wondering; and thenThey told him how I’d killed them for his sake—Those patient, stupid, sullen ghosts of men;And still there seemed…
Of summer days, what sends them dancing throughThis fiery-blossom’d revel of the hours?Theirs are the musing silences betweenThe enraptured crying of shrill birds that makeHeaven in the wood while summer dawns awake;And theirs the faintest winds that hush the green.And they are as my soul that wings its wayOut of the starlit dimness into morn:And…
Your laughter is a broken song;And death has found you, kind and gay.We may forget those transient thingsThat made your charm and our delight:But loyal love has deathless wingsThat rise and triumph out of night.So, in the days to come, your nameShall be as music that ascendsWhen honour turns a heart from shame…O heart of…
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,Winging wildly across the whiteOrchards and dark-green fields; on–on–and out of sight.Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted;And beauty came like the setting sun:My heart was shaken with tears; and horrorDrifted away … O, but EveryoneWas a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.
And speed glum heroes up the line to death.You’d see me with my puffy petulant face,Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,Reading the Roll of Honour. ‘Poor young chap,’I’d say — ‘I used to know his father well;Yes, we’ve lost heavily in this last scrap.’And when the war is done and youth stone dead,I’d toddle…
