Yonder a maid and her wight
Come whispering by:
War’s annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die.
1915.
CRY OF THE HOMELESS
AFTER THE PRUSSIAN INVASION OF BELGIUM
“INSTIGATOR of the ruin—
Whichsoever thou mayst be
Of the masterful of Europe
That contrived our misery—
Hear the wormwood-worded greeting
From each city, shore, and lea
Of thy victims:
“Conqueror, all hail to thee!”
“Yea: ‘All hail!’ we grimly shout thee
That wast author, fount, and head
Of these wounds, whoever proven
When our times are throughly read.
‘May thy loved be slighted, blighted,
And forsaken,’ be it said
By thy victims,
‘And thy children beg their bread!’
“Nay: a richer malediction!—
Rather let this thing befall
In time’s hurling and unfurling
On the night when comes thy call;
That compassion dew thy pillow
And bedrench thy senses all
For thy victims,
Till death dark thee with his pall.”
_August_ 1915.
BEFORE MARCHING AND AFTER
(_in Memoriam F. W. G._)
ORION swung southward aslant
Where the starved Egdon pine-trees had thinned,
The Pleiads aloft seemed to pant
With the heather that twitched in the wind;
But he looked on indifferent to sights such as these,
Unswayed by love, friendship, home joy or home sorrow,
And wondered to what he would march on the morrow.
The crazed household-clock with its whirr
Rang midnight within as he stood,
He heard the low sighing of her
Who had striven from his birth for his good;
But he still only asked the spring starlight, the breeze,
What great thing or small thing his history would borrow
From that Game with Death he would play on the morrow.
When the heath wore the robe of late summer,
And the fuchsia-bells, hot in the sun,
Hung red by the door, a quick comer
Brought tidings that marching was done
For him who had joined in that game overseas
Where Death stood to win, though his name was to borrow
A brightness therefrom not to fade on the morrow.
_September_ 1915.
“OFTEN WHEN WARRING”
OFTEN when warring for he wist not what,
An enemy-soldier, passing by one weak,
Has tendered water, wiped the burning cheek,
And cooled the lips so black and clammed and hot;
Then gone his way, and maybe quite forgot
The deed of grace amid the roar and reek;
Yet larger vision than loud arms bespeak
He there has reached, although he has known it not.
For natural mindsight, triumphing in the act
Over the throes of artificial rage,
Has thuswise muffled victory’s peal of pride,
Rended to ribands policy’s specious page
That deals but with evasion, code, and pact,
And war’s apology wholly stultified.
1915.