Now they arrive. The priest repeats the service.
The drifting rain obscures.
They are dispersed.
The dying sun streams out: a moment's radiance;
The still, wet, glistening grave; the trod sward steaming.
Sudden great guns startle, echoing on the silence.
Thunder. Thunder.
He has Fallen in battle.
(O Boy! Boy!)
Lessening now. The rain
Patters anew. Far guns rumble and shudder
And night descends upon the desolate plain.
Lawford,
September, 1916.
II.—BOY
In a far field, away from England, lies
A Boy I friended with a care like love;
All day the wide earth aches, the cold wind cries,
The melancholy clouds drive on above.
There, separate from him by a little span,
Two eagle cousins, generous, reckless, free,
Two Grenfells, lie, and my Boy is made man,
One with these elder knights of chivalry.
Boy, who expected not this dreadful day,
Yet leaped, a soldier, at the sudden call,
Drank as your fathers, deeper though than they,
The soldier's cup of anguish, blood, and gall,