The fugitive sunlight slips
Over the fragment of a cloud,
And the sky opens wide,
Behold the dawn!
Where is the nightmare now? the angry-browed?
The lowering imminence—the bloody eyed?
Fled, as the threat of midnight, fled away,
Gone, after four dark timeless ages, gone.
Hail the day!
Silence, robed in the morning's golden fleece,
Folding the world's torn wings to stillness, giving
Peace to the dead, and to the living,
Peace.
Tours, 1918
XIV - THERMOPYLAE
Men lied to them and so they went to die.
Some fell, unknowing that they were deceived,
And some escaped, and bitterly bereaved,
Beheld the truth they loved shrink to a lie.
And those there were that never had believed,
But from afar had read the gathering sky,
And darkly wrapt in that dread prophecy,
Died trusting that their truth might be retrieved.
It matters not. For life deals thus with Man;
To die alone deceived or with the mass,
Or disillusioned to complete his span.
Thermopylae or Golgotha, all one,
The young dead legions in the narrow pass;
The stark black cross against the setting sun.
Pomfret, 1919