With nights of balm,
And the dark, sweet hours
Brooding with calm,
Pregnant with flowers.
See how she speeds them,
Each childlike bloom,
And softly leads them
To tend his tomb!—
The white thorn nears
As the cowslip goes;
Then the iris appears;
And then, the rose.
GOING OVER
A girl's voice in the night troubled my heart.
Across the roar of the guns, the crash of the shells,
Low and soft as a sigh, clearly I heard it.
Where was the broken parapet, crumbling about me?
Where my shadowy comrades, crouching expectant?
A girl's voice in the dark troubled my heart.
A dream was the ooze of the trench, the wet clay slipping,
A dream the sudden out-flare of the wide-flung Verys.
I saw but a garden of lilacs, a-flower in the dusk.
What was the sergeant saying?—I passed it along.—
Did I pass it along? I was breathing the breath of the lilacs.
For a girl's voice in the night troubled my heart.
Over! How the mud sucks! Vomits red the barrage.
But I am far off in the hush of a garden of lilacs.
For a girl's voice in the night troubled my heart.
Tender and soft as a sigh, clearly I heard it.