Since then thou art sole queen of all that Is,
And without thee to help can nothing rise
To cross the glorious frontiers of the light,
And nothing grow in gentleness or grace,
Thee do I pray to aid my labouring verse,
Now that of all that Is I strive to sing,
Lady, for my dear Memmian heir, whom thou
Hast blest with every constant excellence;
For his sake, chiefly, fill my words with life.
AN EPILOGUE
I. THE FLUKE
For two years you went
Through all the worst of it,
Men fell around you, but you did not fall.
On the Somme when the air was a sea
Of contesting flashes and clouds of smoke,
Your gunners fell fast but you got never a scratch.
And once when you watched from a village tower
(At Longueval, was it?) between our guns and theirs
As men fought in the houses below,
A shell from an English battery came
And tore a hole in the tower below you,
But you were not hurt and remained observing.
And now,
A casual shell has come
And pierced your head,
And the men who were with you, uninjured,
Carried you back,
And you died on the way.
II. THE CONVERSATION
When we've greeted each other again,
And you've filled your pipe and sat down and stretched your legs,
You will look in the fire for a minute
And then you will say, with a yawn,
"Well, when do you think this damned war will be over?"
And I shall say nothing, or something as empty as nothing.
But I am forgetting.
We shall not greet each other again;
You will not ask that question again.