Chapter 11

A bowl of daffodils A league and a league from the trenches--from the traversed maze of the lines A song of hate is a song of Hell A sudden swirl of song in the bright sky A wind in the world! The dark departs A wingèd death has smitten dumb thy bells All that a man might ask thou hast given me, England All the hills and vales along Alone amid the battle-din untouched Ambassador of Christ you go Around no fire the soldiers sleep to-night As I lay in the trenches As when the shadow of the sun's eclipse At last there'll dawn the last of the long year Awake, ye nations, slumbering supine

Because for once the sword broke in her hand Before I knew, the Dawn was on the road Beneath fair Magdalen's storied towers Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead Broken, bewildered by the long retreat Brothers in blood! They who this wrong began Burned from the ore's rejected dross By all the deeds to Thy dear glory done By all the glories of the day By day, by night, along the lines their dull boom rings

Champion of human honour, let us lave Come, Death, I'd have a word with thee Courage came to you with your boyhood's grace

Dark, dark lay the drifters, against the red west Dawn off the Foreland--the young flood making Dear son of mine, the baby days are over Dreary lay the long road, dreary lay the town

Endless lanes sunken in the clay England, in this great fight to which you go England! where the sacred flame

Facing the guns, he jokes as well Far fall the day when England's realm shall see For all we have and are Franceline rose in the dawning gray From morn to midnight, all day through Further and further we leave the scene

Give us a name to fill the mind Great names of thy great captains gone before Green gardens in Laventie Guns of Verdun point to Metz

He said: Thou petty people, let me pass Hearken, the feet of the Destroyer tread Here is his little cambric frock Here lies a clerk who half his life had spent Here, where we stood together, we three men

I cannot quite remember.... There were five I feel the spring far off, far off I have a rendezvous with Death I heard the rumbling guns, I saw the smoke I know a beach road I never knew you save as all men know I pray for peace; yet peace is but a prayer I saw her first abreast the Boston Light I saw the spires of Oxford I see across the chasm of flying years I was out early to-day, spying about I went upon a journey I will die cheering, if I needs must die If I should die, think only this of me In a vision of the night I saw them In lonely watches night by night In the face of death, they say, he joked--he had no fear In the glad revels, in the happy fêtes It is portentous, and a thing of state It was silent in the street

Land of the desolate, Mother of tears Land of the Martyrs--of the martyred dead Led by Wilhelm, as you tell Lest the young soldiers be strange in heaven Low and brown barns, thatched and repatched and tattered

Men of my blood, you English men! Men of the Twenty-first Moon, slow rising, over the trembling sea-rim Mother and child! Though the dividing sea My leg? It's off at the knee My name is Darino, the poet. You have heard? _Oui, Comédie Française_

Nay, nay, sweet England, do not grieve Near where the royal victims fell No Man's Land is an eerie sight No more old England will they see Not long did we lie on the torn, red field of pain Not since Wren's Dome has whispered with man's prayer Not with her ruined silver spires Now is the midnight of the nations: dark Now lamp-lit gardens in the blue dusk shine Now slowly sinks the day-long labouring sun Now spake the Emperor to all his shining battle forces

O gracious ones, we bless your name O living pictures of the dead O race that Caesar knew Of all my dreams by night and day Often I think of you, Jimmy Doane Oh, down by the Millwall Basin as I went the other day Oh, red is the English rose Oh! yon hills are filled with sunlight, and the green leaves paled to gold Our little hour,--how swift it flies Out where the line of battle cleaves Over the twilight field

_Qui vive?_ Who passes by up there? Quiet thou didst stand at thine appointed place

Robbed mother of the stricken Motherland

Saints have adored the lofty soul of you See you that stretch of shell-torn mud spotted with pools of mire Shadow by shadow, stripped for fight She came not into the Presence as a martyred saint might come She was binding the wounds of her enemies when they came Shyly expectant, gazing up at Her Sometimes I fly at dawn above the sea

The battery grides and jingles The falling rain is music overhead The first to climb the parapet The horror-haunted Belgian plains riven by shot and shell The naked earth is warm with Spring The road that runs up to Messines The starshells float above, the bayonets glisten There are five men in the moonlight There is a hill in England There is wild water from the north They had hot scent across the spumy sea They sent him back to her. The letter came This is my faith, and my mind's heritage This is the ballad of Langemarck This was the gleam then that lured from far Those who have stood for thy cause when the dark was around thee Thou warden of the western gate, above Manhattan Bay Thou, whose deep ways are in the sea Three hundred thousand men, but not enough To the Judge of Right and Wrong 'T was in the piping time of peace

Under our curtain of fire Under the tow-path past the barges Unflinching hero, watchful to foresee

Was there love once? I have forgotten her We are here in a wood of little beeches We challenged Death. He threw with weighted dice We may not know how fared your soul before We willed it not. We have not lived in hate What have I given What is the gift we have given thee, Sister? What of the faith and fire within us What was it kept you so long, brave German submersible? When battles were fought When consciousness came back, he found he lay When first I saw you in the curious street When the fire sinks in the grate, and night has bent When there is Peace our land no more Whence not unmoved I see the nations form Wherever war, with its red woes With arrows on their quarters and with numbers on their hoofs With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children

Ye sleepers, who will sing you You dare to say with perjured lips You have become a forge of snow-white fire