Guards!

Category: Poetry
A Review in Hyde Park 1913.
The Crowd Watches.

Where the trees rise like cliffs, proud and blue-tinted in the distance,
Between the cliffs of the trees, on the grey- green park
Rests a still line of soldiers, red motionless range of guards
Smouldering with darkened busbies beneath the bay- onets' slant rain.

Colossal in nearness a blue police sits still on his horse
Guarding the path; his hand relaxed at his thigh,
And skyward his face is immobile, eyelids aslant
In tedium, and mouth relaxed as if smiling - ineffable tedium!

So! So! Gaily a general canters across the space,
With white plumes blinking under the evening grey sky.
And suddenly, as if the ground moved
The red range heaves in slow, magnetic reply.

Available translations:

English (Original)