I had met Love not many days before,
And as in blissful mood I listening lay
None ever had of joy so full a store.
I thought that Spring must last for evermore,
For I was young and loved, and it was May.
. . . . . . . . . .
Now it is May again, and sweetly clear
Perhaps once more aspires the Latin hymn
From Magdalen tower, but not for me to hear.
I toil far distant, for a darker year
Shadows the century with menace grim.
I walk in ways where pain and sorrow dwell,
And ruin such as only War can bring,
Where each lives through his individual hell,
Fraught with remembered horror none can tell,
And no more is there glory in the Spring.
And I am worn with tears, for he I loved
Lies cold beneath the stricken sod of France;
Hope has forsaken me, by Death removed,
And Love that seemed so strong and gay has proved
A poor crushed thing, the toy of cruel Chance.
Often I wonder, as I grieve in vain,
If when the long, long future years creep slow,
And War and tears alike have ceased to reign,
I ever shall recapture, once again,
The mood of that May morning, long ago.
1st London General Hospital,
May 1916.
THE TWO TRAVELLERS
Beware!
You met two travellers in the town
Who promised you that they would take you down
The valley far away
To some strange carnival this Summer’s day.
Take care,
Lest in the crowded street
They hurry past you with forgetting feet,
And leave you standing there.
ROUNDEL
(“Died of Wounds”)
Because you died, I shall not rest again,
But wander ever through the lone world wide,
Seeking the shadow of a dream grown vain
Because you died.