The rainy Pleiads wester,

The doors clap to, the pane is blind with showers.Pass me the can, lad; there’s an end of May.There’s one spoilt spring to scant our mortal lot,One season ruined of your little store.May will be fine next year as like as not:But ay, but then we shall be twenty-four.We for a certainty are not the…

Football then was fighting sorrowFor the young man’s soul.Now in Maytime to the wicketOut I march with bat and pad:See the son of grief at cricketTrying to be glad.Try I will; no harm in trying:Wonder ’tis how little mirthKeeps the bones of man from lyingOn the bed of earth.

And there lie Hughley peopleAnd there lie friends of mine.Tall in their midst the towerDivides the shade and sun,And the clock strikes the hourAnd tells the time to none.To south the headstones cluster,The sunny mounds lie thick;The dead are more in musterAt Hughley than the quick.North, for a soon-told number,Chill graves the sexton delves,And steeple-shadowed…

And the hope of man as wellFlowers among the morning dews.Now the old come out to look,Winter past and winter’s pains,How the sky in pool and brookGlitters on the grassy plains.Easily the gentle airWafts the turning season on;Things to comfort them are there,Though ’tis true the best are gone.Now the scorned unlucky ladRousing from his…

I brought them home unheeded;The hue was not the wear.So up and down I sow themFor lads like me to find,When I shall lie below them,A dead man out of mind.Some seed the birds devour,And some the season mars,But here and there will flower,The solitary stars,And fields will yearly bear themAs light-leaved spring comes on,And…

Stars may plot in heaven with planet,Lightning rive the rock of granite,Tempest tread the oakwood under,Fear not you for flesh or soul;Marching, fighting, victory past,Stretch your limbs in peace at last.Stir not for the soldier’s drilling,Nor the fever nothing cures;Throb of drum and timbal’s rattleCall but men alive to battle,And the fife with death-notes fillingScreams…