MISSING
They told me nothing more: I bow my head
And squander life, between the quick and dead
Irresolute. Yet I again could be
Mistress of life, Queen of my destiny,
If I but knew—But now Remembrance plays
My being back through spring and summer days
We passed together; and I see him still
Swinging to meet me down the tardy hill.
That day the birds were new-inspired; a breeze
Bestirred, as it in wonderment, the trees;
The very clouds paused in their breathless race,
And shadows played upon his open face;
And I remember how his laughing eyes
Shone deep as pools in sea-blue ecstasies.
The meadow grasses rustled in the heat;
I even heard the silence of his feet
Down the slow hill—And now the dawning birth
Of beauty woke my senses to the earth
Unveiled in radiance. The sweeping skies—
Unseen unless reflected in his eyes—
Marshalled cloud companies with new delight;
Just for us two the spangled dome of night
Swung out the journeying moon.
But still I hold
Burnt in my memory in beaten gold
Days when the Spring stirred in each waking bush
A blue-flecked jay or tawny-feathered thrush,
And drowsy Winter, startled unawares
By arc-winged partridges or listening hares,
Fled guiltily. We heard the magpies call—
Those dominoes at Nature’s carnival—
And once a kingfisher, a lovely gleam
Snatched from a rainbow, darted to a stream.
The snowdrops bowed their heads for us to see
Shy peeping buds of hooded chastity;
And stalwart cowslips raised sun-glinted eyes
To those who stooped to pluck their sanctities.
Grass-nestled crocuses that scorn the wind
Speared upward proudly and besought mankind
To step with care. Near by, we searched a glade
Where violets brood in sweetness, half afraid
To wake their petals. On we roamed, and soon
The flower that shares her secret with the moon
In pale gold fellowship peeped out, among
A host of truculent daffodils that flung
Their trumpets down the wind.
Each breathless day
Broke to fulfil its promise, till the May
Had fledged her clustered blooms and swung her pride
In bowing sweetness to the country side.
Beauty was born again. But now the sound
Of heavy Autumn patters to the ground,
And loud discordant booms of thunder roll
Where that enchanted owner of my soul
Lies dead, or dying, or is living still:
At last the fibres of my struggling will
Falter exhausted, and my cowering brain
Cries out in anguish like a child in pain.
If he is dead, then I abide to prove
That brief fulfilment may be perfect love.
How should I grieve? His life inspired in me
A joy that shall outlive eternity,
Wrought out, complete, unsnared by time and age
My jewelled past my priceless heritage.
Shall misery usurp my realm of years
And leave me drowning in self-pitying tears,
A derelict in my own whirlpool swirled—
Me—whom Love crowned an empress of the world?
But sometimes ’ere the light
Glimmers dawn-pearled to splash the feet of night,
Ere red, sun-gilded riot floods the sky,
A whisper, swelling to a ringing cry,
Tells me he’s living still. No lash could sting
Like this persistent voice re-echoing
That mocks me as I stumble to my feet.
O, shall I find him wandering in the street?
But every beckoning corner drags me past
Strangers, new faces, each one like the last
Dull, cold, inscrutable. At times I caught
The look—the walk—the gesture that I sought;
And once with throbbing veins I found those eyes
That shone like pools in sea-blue ecstasies,
But looked beyond me—cold expressionless
In vacant wonder at my helplessness,
Then, haunted by that stare,
Beaten, I knew the bedrock of despair.
O, Thou who poised the world, are all my tears
Too light, too pitiful to reach Thine ears?
Locksmith of happiness, aloof, apart,
Am I too impotent to touch Thine heart?
Tell me he’s dead or dying; say he stands
Seeking for guidance the warm touch of hands,
Doomed in an instant to eternal night,
With only mind and memory for sight—
For I could cheer him.
But Lord quench this drought,
The unfathomable immensity of doubt,
Tell me he’s maimed or crippled, torn or blind,
Staring through eyes that show his wandering mind—
Tell me he’s rotting in a place abhorred,—
Not this, not this, O Lord!
TWO TRENCH POEMS
I
THE STORM NIGHT
Peal after peal of splitting thunder rolls
(Still roar the howling guns, and star-shells rise)
We perish, drowned in anger-blasted holes,
Give ear, O Lord! Our very manhood cries,
Shell-fodder yea—but spare our human souls
From fury-shaken skies!