With pity and pride, photographs of all colours,
All sizes, subjects: khaki brothers in France;
Or mothers’ faces worn with countless dolours;
Or girls whose eyes were challenging and must dance,
Though in a picture only, a common cheap
Ill-taken card; and children—frozen, some
(Babies) waiting on Dicky-bird to peep
Out of the handkerchief that is his home
(But he’s so shy!). And some with bright looks, calling
Delight across the miles of land and sea,
That not the dread of barrage suddenly falling
Could quite blot out—not mud nor lethargy.
Smiles and triumphant careless laughter. O
The pain of them, wide Earth’s most sacred things!
Lying in dugouts, hearing the great shells slow
Sailing mile-high, the heart mounts higher and sings.
But once—O why did he keep that bitter token
Of a dead Love?—that boy, who, suddenly moved,
Showed me, his eyes wet, his low talk broken,
A girl who better had not been beloved.
THAT COUNTY
Go up, go up your ways of varying love,
Take each his darling path wherever lie
The central fires of secret memory;
Whether Helvellyn tower the lakes above;
Or black Plinlimmon time and tempest prove;
Or any English heights of bravery.
I will go climb my little hills to see
Severn, and Malverns, May Hill’s tiny grove.
No Everest is here, no peaks of power
Astonish men. But on the winding ways
White in the frost-time, blinding in full June blaze,
A man may take all quiet heart’s delight—
Village and quarry, taverns and many a tower
That saw Armada beacons set alight.
INTERVAL
To straight the back, how good; to see the slow
Dispersed cloud-flocks of Heaven wandering blind
Without a shepherd, feel caress the kind
Sweet August air, soft drifting to and fro
Meadow and arable.—Leaning on my hoe
I searched for any beauty eyes might find.
The tossing wood showed silver in the wind;
Green hills drowsed wakeful in the golden glow.