Pomfret, 1919
XVI
I would know what can not be known;
I would reach beyond my sphere,
And question the stars in their courses,
And the dead of many a year.
I would tame the infinite forces
That bend me down like the grain,
Peace would I give to the fields where the young men died,
Peace to the sea where the ships of battle ride,
And light again to the eyes of the beautiful slain.
This would I do, but today against the sky,
They who were building a cross grinned as I passed them by.
Pomfret, 1919
XVII
The yellow bird is singing by the pond,
And all about him stars have burst in bloom,
A colonnade stands pallidly beyond,
And beneath that a solitary tomb.
Who lies within that tomb I do not know,
The yellow bird intones his threnody
In notes as colourless as driven snow,
Clashing with the green hush and out of key.
O cease, your endless song is out of tune,
Where all these old forgotten things are sleeping,—
Give back to silence's eternal keeping
The windless pond, the hanging colonnade,
Lest in the wane of the long afternoon,
The Dead awake, unhappy and afraid.
Bordeaux, 1917