Amid this hot green glowing gloom
A word falls with a raindrop's boom....
Like baskets of ripe fruit in air
The bird-songs seem, suspended where
Those goldfinches--the ripe warm lights
Peck slyly at them--take quick flights.
My feet are feathered like a bird
Among the shadows scarcely heard;
I bring you branches green with dew
And fruits that you may crown anew
Your whirring waspish-gilded hair
Amid this cornucopia--
Until your warm lips bear the stains
And bird-blood leap within your veins.
_F. W. Harvey_
Harvey was a lance-corporal in the English army and was in the German
prison camp at Guetersloh when he wrote _The Bugler_, one of the
isolated great poems written during the war. Much of his other verse
is haphazard and journalistic, although _Gloucestershire Friends_
contains several lines that glow with the colors of poetry.