Works

"Come, surly fellow, come! A song!"
What, madmen? Sing to you?
Choose from the clouded tales of wrong
And terror I bring to you.

Of a night so torn with cries,
Honest men sleeping...

"Give us Rain, Rain," said the bean and the pea,
"Not so much Sun,
Not so much Sun."
But the Sun smiles bravely and encouragingly,
And no rain falls and no waters run.
...

(FOR D.C.T., KILLED AT FRICOURT, MARCH, 1916)


Yet once an earlier David took
Smooth pebbles from the brook:
Out between the lines he went
To that one-sided tournament,...

He fell in victory's fierce pursuit,
Holed through and through with shot,
A sabre sweep had hacked him deep
Twixt neck and shoulderknot....

The potman cannot well recall,
The ostler never knew,...

Now I begin to know at last,
These nights when I sit down to rhyme,
The form and measure of that vast
God we call Poetry, he who stoops
And leaps me through his paper hoops
A little higher every time....

Lost manor where I walk continually
A ghost, while yet in woman's flesh and blood;
Up your broad stairs mounting with outspread fingers
And gliding steadfast down your corridors...

It doesn't matter what's the cause,
What wrong they say we're righting,
A curse for treaties, bonds and laws,
When we're to do the fighting!
And since we lads are proud and true,...