[Footnote: Reprinted from The Volunteer and other Poems, by kind permission of Messrs. Sidgwick & Jackson.]
Here lies a clerk who half his life had spent
Toiling at ledgers in a city grey,
Thinking that so his days would drift away
With no lance broken in life's tournament;
Yet ever 'twixt the book and his bright eyes
The gleaming eagles of the legions came,
And horsemen, charging under phantom skies,
Went thundering past beneath the oriflamme.
And now those waiting dreams are satisfied,
From twilight to the halls of dawn he went;
His lance is broken—but he lies content
With that high hour, he wants no recompense,
Who found his battle in the last resort,
Nor needs he any hearse to bear him hence,
Who goes to join the men at Agincourt.
He wrote this when he was in Flanders in the war:
THE FALLEN SPIRE (A Flemish Village)
[Footnote: Reprinted from The Volunteer and other Poems, by kind permission of Messrs. Sidgwick & Jackson.]
That spire is gone that slept for centuries,
Mirrored among the lilies, calm and low;
And now the water holds but empty skies
Through which the rivers of the thunder flow.
The church lies broken near the fallen spire,
For here, among these old and human things,
Death sweeps along the street with feet of fire,
And goes upon his way with moaning wings.
On pavements by the kneeling herdsmen worn
The drifting fleeces of the shells are rolled;
Above the Saints a village Christ forlorn,
Wounded again, looks down upon His fold.
And silence follows fast: no evening peace,
But leaden stillness, when the thunder wanes,
Haunting the slender branches of the trees,
And settling low upon the listless plains.