Football then was fighting sorrow
For the young man’s soul.
Now in Maytime to the wicket
Out I march with bat and pad:
See the son of grief at cricket
Trying to be glad.
Try I will; no harm in trying:
Wonder ’tis how little mirth
Keeps the bones of man from lying
On the bed of earth.
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The Wain upon the northern steep
Oh I will sit me down and weepFor bones in Africa.For pay and medals, name and rank,Things that he has not found,He hove the Cross to heaven and sankThe pole-star underground.And now he does not even seeSigns of the nadir rollAt night over the ground where heIs buried with the pole.
I ‘listed at home for a lancer,
I ‘listed at home for a lancerTo ride on a horse to my grave.And over the seas we were biddenA country to take and to keep;And far with the brave I have ridden,And now with the brave I shall sleep.For round me the men will be lyingThat learned me the way to behave,And showed me…
The time you won your town the race
Man and boy stood cheering by,And home we brought you shoulder-high.To-day, the road all runners come,Shoulder-high we bring you home,And set you at your threshold down,Townsman of a stiller town.Smart lad, to slip betimes awayFrom fields where glory does not stayAnd early though the laurel growsIt withers quicker than the rose.Eyes the shady night has…
Stars, I have seen them fall,
No star is lost at allFrom all the star-sown sky.The toil of all that beHelps not the primal fault;It rains into the sea,And still the sea is salt.
Good creatures, do you love your lives
Here is a knife like other knives,That cost me eighteen pence.I need but stick it in my heartAnd down will come the sky,And earth’s foundations will departAnd all you folk will die.
The sloe was lost in flower,
That was the lover’s hour,The hour for lies and him.If thorns are all the bower,If north winds freeze the fir,Why, ’tis another’s hour,The hour for truth and her.