Your body's like a flower on a snapt stalk,
Your head hangs from your neck as blank as chalk.
What horrors haunt you, head upon your breast!
... O but you'll die as bravely as the rest!
DURING THE BATTLE
O the terror of the Battle at this ending of the days!
O the thunder of the wings through the gloom!
O the thousand thousand companies that strew the sombre ways
To achieve this final doom!
Where the flames disrupt the night and the hell-fumes flee,
'Mid the darkness and the splitting of the skies,
Only your young white wistful face I see,
My brother, only your eyes!
March 1918
JACK
The heavy smells of Spring
Are flooding through my skin.
My body drinks them in.
Like rich red veils they cling
About my prostrate head.
I swoon into a bed,
The heavy smells of Spring.