Morning Express
Along the wind-swept platform, pinched and white, The travellers stand in pools of wintry light, Offering themselves to morn’s long, slanting arrows. The train’s due; porters trundle laden barrows. The train steams in, volleying
Stand-To: Good Friday Morning
I’d been on duty from two till four. I went and stared at the dug-out door. Down in the frowst I heard them snore. ‘Stand to!’ Somebody grunted and swore. Dawn was misty; the
To His Dead Body
When roaring gloom surged inward and you cried, Groping for friendly hands, and clutched, and died, Like racing smoke, swift from your lolling head Phantoms of thought and memory thinned and fled. Yet, though
Survivors
No doubt they’ll soon get well; the shock and strain Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk. Of course they’re ‘longing to go out again,’- These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk. They’ll
David Cleek
I cannot think that Death will press his claim To snuff you out or put you off your game: You’ll still contrive to play your steady round, Though hurricanes may sweep the dismal ground,
Wind in the Beechwood
The glorying forest shakes and swings with glancing Of boughs that dip and strain; young, slanting sprays Beckon and shift like lissom creatures dancing, While the blown beechwood streams with drifting rays. Rooted in
Limitations
If you could crowd them into forty lines! Yes; you can do it, once you get a start; All that you want is waiting in your head, For long-ago you’ve learnt it off by
A Letter Home
(To Robert Graves) I Here I’m sitting in the gloom Of my quiet attic room. France goes rolling all around, Fledged with forest May has crowned. And I puff my pipe, calm-hearted, Thinking how
Idyll
In the grey summer garden I shall find you With day-break and the morning hills behind you. There will be rain-wet roses; stir of wings; And down the wood a thrush that wakes and
The Redeemer
Darkness: the rain sluiced down; the mire was deep; It was past twelve on a mid-winter night, When peaceful folk in beds lay snug asleep; There, with much work to do before the light,
Their Frailty
He’s got a Blighty wound. He’s safe; and then War’s fine and bold and bright. She can forget the doomed and prisoned men Who agonize and fight. He’s back in France. She loathes the
Goblin Revel
In gold and grey, with fleering looks of sin, I watch them come; by two, by three, by four, Advancing slow, with loutings they begin Their woven measure, widening from the door; While music-men
To a Very Wise Man
I Fires in the dark you build; tall quivering flames In the huge midnight forest of the unknown. Your soul is full of cities with dead names, And blind-faced, earth-bound gods of bronze and
Night on the Convoy
(ALEXANDRIA-MARSEILLES) Out in the blustering darkness, on the deck A gleam of stars looks down. Long blurs of black, The lean Destroyers, level with our track, Plunging and stealing, watch the perilous way Through
At Daybreak
I listen for him through the rain, And in the dusk of starless hours I know that he will come again; Loth was he ever to forsake me: He comes with glimmering of flowers