The Broken Sword
Soldier, soldier, burnishing your sword,
Is there no place for a wayfaring man in the courts of your lord?
A couch, and a crust, and a song, and a flagon of wine?
Haggard, begrimed though I be, and out at heel,
A lean, grey hop-and-go-one with a crutch of steel,
Brother-at-arms with death? Behold the sign:
I have tasted great weather on high, white, green-turreted cliffs by the sea.
I have tramped the tough heather, the purple, the brown,
By pools of peat water; from the night to the day,
Till the moon has dropped down: the ghost of a minim, low down,
In a high-piping treble of grey.
In shy, dim recesses, mid tresses, green tresses.
Slow dipping, caressing, I've heard
A whisper, a chuckle of laughter, a scamper; and high,
High up in the air the cry, the call of a bird.
And when the night came with a flicker of wings
I have heard the earth breathing quiet and slow
Like a pulse in the tiny, wild tumult of things.
I have sung to the sun, and the moon and the stars,
In valleys uncharted of tumbled sea meadows
I have shouted aloud 'neath a sky whipped to smoke in the fret of my spars
And I fought as I fared; and my couch was a camp; and my songs were my scars.
Soldier! Soldier! Cosetting your sword!
Have you no place for a harper-at-arms in the courts of your lord —
Prim fountains, clipped trees, and trim gardens, and music, and rest?
Nay, keep your sugared delights and your margents embroidered! My life is the best.
In my ears is the sound of a bugle blown, and my pulses like kettle-drums beat
For the hungry blind onset, the rally, the stubborn defeat.
I, too, could have polished, and polished, and jeered at the wayfaring man who passed by.
But I follow the fighting Apollo.
And I stand unashamed; and I raise up my shard of a sword; and I cry the old cry.
Please God they shall find but a hilt in my hand when I die!
