PHÈDRE
Her gesture is the soaring of a hymn,
Her voice has robbed the spoil of Hybla’s bees;
And like the frozen music of a frieze,
Calm, as she moves majestic, every limb.
Clear as a crystal beaker’s sounding rim,
Her heart gives voice to sobbing melodies,
And her frame trembles, swept by passion’s breeze,
And sultry clouds her blazing eyes bedim.
A faery caught in her own fatal snare,
A wounded eagle struggling to be free,
Whose Kingdom was the snow and the sun’s flame
More queenly than all empresses is she,
Discrowned albeit, defeated and in despair;
The stricken lily puts the rose to shame.
THE WOUNDED
The wounded lie and groan upon the plain;
And one there is whom it is vain to lift;
So give him water. It is the last gift,
And very soon he shall not thirst again.
All white and gold the Chief with a troop of horse
Trots by. The soldier opens smiling eyes;
And at the latest gasp of life he cries:
“Long live!” with all his feeble flickering force.
Before he said his say he died content.
And we, the wounded on life’s battlefield,
Enrolled and sent to war to fight and die,
When conquered by our mortal wound, we cry
“Long live!” obedient to our sacrament,
When God with all His universe rides by.
Manchuria, 1904.