Hate is strong, but Love is stronger,
And the world shall wake to birth
When the touch of man no longer
Stays the touch of God from Earth.
Tell me, Stranger, is it true
There is magic happening,
Are all the dappled fields of Kew
Bowing to their Lord the Spring?
SPRING IN THE TRENCHES
The racing clouds have borne her message down
And blown a thrilling rumour, from the far
Heart-centres of each crowded port and town,
And up the flowing arteries of War.
Life, life, green tales of corn in sprouting blades,
Of swallows crowding with sea-sprinkled wings
And ash-buds amber-gummed round close-furled green.
High blossom mantling murmurous orchard glades
In air a-tingle April-sweet and keen—
Ah, we have heard of wondrous happenings.
For now the magic carnivals begin
The lilac broods in honeyed secrecy,
And dappled lawns are changed: a Harlequin
Has brushed the tangled carpet silently.
We know how white narcissus fills the lake
With dancing shadows; how in open blue
A chestnut builds her clustered pyramids,
And down below anemones awake;
Long-hushed the violets open wide their lids
And all the dreamed-of fantasy comes true.
Glad tidings thrill the re-awakened earth
By daffodils and blue-bells heralded;
Spring with her van imperial comes forth
To herald Summer proudly canopied
Beneath the bowing leaves. Persistent Spring
Bestirs the seed enshrined in Winter’s store;
And even round the parapet a breath
Of far-flung prophecy is clamouring:
“Behold new life within the tomb of death
“Importunate and vivid as before.”
ON THE ROAD
We halted, with the urgent Spring behind
Our straining teams, where all the land was black,
And huddled woods lay beaten, starkly blind:
Their mangled branches loomed athwart the track
Grotesque and terrible. Yet near the way,
A river, scatheless as the open sea,
Flowed like a breathing hope that cannot die
In desolation. Now, at setting day,
Moored water lilies, pale as argent sky,
Cling to the twilight fading silently.
Such is the tale of memory, ere night
Had deepened, and our weary convoy slept
Beside the way. Slow-rising points of light
Twinkled amid the spangled netting swept
Across the ebon desert; and a gleam
Pierced the cloud-woven pillows of the moon.
Now slumber freed me from the iron cage
That bound the snarling war; and, in a dream,
The panorama of a dawning age
Unrolled, a world slow-waking from a swoon.