I heard a voice that cried, "Make way for those who died!"
And all the coloured crowd like ghosts at morning fled;
And down the waiting road, rank after rank there strode,
In mute and measured march a hundred thousand dead.
A hundred thousand dead, with firm and noiseless tread,
All shadowy-grey yet solid, with faces grey and ghast,
And by the house they went, and all their brows were bent
Straight forward; and they passed, and passed, and passed, and passed.
But O there came a place, and O there came a face,
That clenched my heart to see it, and sudden turned my way;
And in the Face that turned I saw two eyes that burned,
Never-forgotten eyes, and they had things to say.
Like desolate stars they shone one moment, and were gone,
And I sank down and put my arms across my head,
And felt them moving past, nor looked to see the last,
In steady silent march, our hundred thousand dead.
PROLOGUE: IN DARKNESS
With my sleeping beloved huddled tranquil beside me, why do I lie awake,
Listening to the loud clock's hurry in the darkness, and feeling my heart's fierce ache
That beats one response to the brain's many questionings, and in solitude bears the weight
Of all the world's evil and misery and frustration, and the senseless pressure of fate?
Is it season of ploughing and sowing, this long vigil, that so certainly it recurs?
In this unsought return of a pain that was ended, is it here that a song first stirs?
Can it be that from this, when to-night's gone from memory, there will spring of a sudden, some time,
Like a silver lily breaking from black deadly waters, the thin-blown shape of a rhyme?