At 10 A.M. or so (in bed,
With lowered blinds and curtains drawn),
There wander lightly through my head
Memories of ruddy dawn--
A thing I never could have said
Before we warred against the Hun,
For then, although I may have heard
That this phenomenon occurred,
I had no notion how the thing was done.
A stranger to the birth of day,
How many have I watched since then!
At least a thousand, I should say
(It seems to me like ten);
On Salisbury Plain, austere and grey,
Breaking night's gloom and deepening mine,
When, crawling forth, I used to see
Stonehenge all shaken visibly
By the rude Sergeant's bellow, "_Rise and shine!_"
Gilding the foam of distant seas--
And humbly then I bowed my neck
And sank forlornly to my knees
To swab the blooming deck;
A wealth of flaming pageantries,
When, in a dusty Indian fort,
I went to early morning jerks,[A]
Cursing the sun and all his works
And dripping perspiration by the quart;
In Egypt, too, a pallid glow
Through swirls of desolating dust--
There often have I watched it grow,
Fed up enough to bust;
In Palestine, uncertain, slow
(While standing-to, with drowsy eyes),
Herald of shells and, what was worse,
Waking the ancient Eastern curse,
A hundred thousand million ravenous flies.
Sombre, inspiring, radiant, chill,
Mysterious, wild, inert, ablaze,
A thousand times on plain and hill
The dawn has held my gaze;
Idly I dream of it, until
A sterner mood invades my brain
And I grow resolute. Here and now
I register a mighty vow
_Never_ to see the beastly thing again.