O fairies of the forest-ring, and little men in green,
And pixies of the moonlight, and elves no eye hath seen,
Brew us a magic potion, of deep and fairy power,
A draught of Lethe—for one night—to tide us past that hour.
CROSSES
All your broken war-spent heroes,
Lord of War and Grief—you pay
With a cross of moulded iron,
Hard-wrought iron cold and grey.
On the Somme you grant five thousand
And five thousand at Verdun;
At the dawn of day you count them
And at setting of the sun.
On the trampled fields of Flanders,
On the bitter roads of France,
Where the big guns chant their war-songs,
And the crimson death-lights dance,
There you count the iron crosses
Of such high and far renown,—-
Grim and grey the men who win them—
Theirs the cross—and yours the crown;—
*****
But the little wooden crosses
You have given the peaceful dead,
O the little wooden crosses,
By each young low-lying head,—
Though the tender grasses hide them,
Or they fall beneath the snows,
Not a cross shall be forgotten,—
God Himself has counted those.
THE CRY
They have laid him away;
Even he who was always so strong and gay
Will be locked in the earth till the judgment day;
"Dust unto dust" I have heard the priest say.
He will never return;
Though I weep my eyes blind, though I pray and yearn,—
Though the star-light goes out and the great suns burn
Into whitest ash,—he will never return.