SOLDIERS that after struggle in the night
See the cold stars assume their shining place,
Watch the sweet moon and her unaltered grace
Mocking with peace the battle-tortured sight,
Think these not careless. These were not less white
Long years ago upon the upturned face
Of other soldiers also of your race
Who on those fields fought such another fight,
These stars, this moon, in their high citadel
Of heaven are witness in the Low Country,
Whose lights are the mere lights of history
Falling on you, these on your fathers fell.
See through the reek and horror, shining through,
Cold lights indeed, but lights of Waterloo!
THE SOLDIER SPEAKS.
THIS then was love of women. O how little
Remembered, being free! Say she was tender
And had a lure of the hands. Here ruthless splendour
Outlures that lure. And, look you, love was brittle
That broke, and none could heal it, being sated.
But this is lasting, this is always stranger
Each terrible new dawn, for each new danger
May be the last of all. O, we have waited
On love like cowards, and the worshipped woman
Enslaved and shamed us. But that shame is over.
We are with death acquainted, and to riot
And call of blood and tenderness and human
Regrets, he does succeed this final lover
Whose love is freedom and whose gift is quiet.
FLOWERS AT HAMPTON COURT.
THE chestnut trees in Bushey Park are lit
This year as always since the spring knows naught
Of war and death, and still the shadows flit
Across the dappled grass and burnish it.
And still at night the moon in stately sort
Is tranquil with the avenues, and lights
The sleeping palace, as on other nights
Of springs long past; but searching for the rose
In vain, the dawn a little whisper knows:
“Where are the flowers that were at Hampton Court?”
Two years ago when all the trees were green
The old red walls were unto to summer brought,
By joyous bands of lilies and the lean
Daffodils danced before or ran between.
Where are they gone these blooms of good report?
And where the lad and where the laughing maid
Who came to wonder and to love who stayed?
For a lost flower is a little thing
But a lost lover is the end of spring.
“Where are the flowers that were at Hampton Court?”
Ah! spring these flowers are growing otherwhere,
In a new soil a changing radiance taught,
Born of the soul and nourished of the air,
Sweeter though scentless and unseen more fair.
Where are they gone these blooms of good report?
Is it perhaps that where the Tigris flows
There blooms an unaccustomed English rose?
And where the guns have killed the spring in France
The English lilies break a silver lance?
“Where are the flowers that were at Hampton Court?”
If thus the flowers, where are those who here
Themselves fresh flowers with the springtime fraught,
Saw the first leaves in Bushey Park appear
The dead swept leaves the leaves of yesteryear?
Where are they gone those lads of good report?
It may be they are sleeping; it may be
Strange lands have taken them or a strange sea.
But wheresoever in the world they lie
An English voice till that world ends will cry
“Here are the flowers that were at Hampton Court?”
Printed at The Vincent Works, Oxford.