Desires,
Little determined desires,
Gripped by the mould,
Moving so hardly among
The earth, of whose heart they were bred,
That is old; it is old,
Not gracious to little desires such as these,
But apter for work on the bases of trees,
Whose branches are hung
Overhead,
Very mightily, there overhead.
Through the summer they stirred,
They strove to the bulbs after May,
Until harvest and song of the bird
Went together away;
And ever till coming of snows
They worked in the mould, for undaunted were those
Swift little determined desires, in the earth
Without sign, any day,
Ever shaping to marvels of birth,
Far away.
And we went
Without heed
On our way,
Never knowing what virtue was spent,
Day by day,
By those little desires that were gallant to breed
Such beauty as fortitude may.
Not once in our mind
Was that corner of earth under trees,
Very mighty and tall,
As we travelled the roads and the seas,
And gathered the wage of our kind,
And were laggard or trim to the call
Of the duties that lengthen the hours
Into seasons that flourish and fall.
And blind,
In the womb of the flowers,
Unresting they wrought,
In the bulbs, in the depth of the year,
Buried far from our thought;
Till one day, when the thrushes were clear
In their note it was spring—and they know—
Unheeding we came into sight
Of that corner forgotten, and lo,
They had won through the meshes of mould,
And treasuries lay in the light,
Of ivory, purple, and gold.
RIDDLES, R.F.C.[1]
(1916)
He was a boy of April beauty; one
Who had not tried the world; who, while the sun
Flamed yet upon the eastern sky, was done.
Time would have brought him in her patient ways—
So his young beauty spoke—to prosperous days,
To fulness of authority and praise.
He would not wait so long. A boy, he spent
His boy’s dear life for England. Be content:
No honour of age had been more excellent.
[1] Lieutenant Stewart G. Ridley, Royal Flying Corps, sacrificed his life in the Egyptian desert in an attempt to save a comrade. He was twenty years of age.