To recall that thought again! 
Into my heart fear crawled
  And wreathed close around,
Mortal, convulsive, cold,
  And I lay bound. 
Fear set before my eyes
  Unimaginable pain;
Approaching agonies
  Sprang nimbly into my brain. 
Just as a thrilling wind
  Plucks every mournful wire,
So terror on my wild mind
  Fingered, with ice and fire. 
O, not death I feared,
  But the anguish of the body;
My dizzying passions heard,
  Saw my own bosom bloody. 
I thought of years of woe,
  Moments prolonged to years,
Heard my heart racing so,
  Redoubling all those fears. 
Yet still I could not cry,
  Not a sound the stillness broke;
But the dark stirred, and my
  Negligent angel woke.

X

THE STREETS

Marlboro’ and Waterloo and Trafalgar,
Tuileries, Talavera, Valenciennes,
Were strange names all, and all familiar;

For down their streets I went, early and late
(Is there a street where I have never been
Of all those hundreds, narrow, skyless, straight?)—­

Early and late, they were my woods and meadows;
The rain upon their dust my summer smell;
Their scant herb and brown sparrows and harsh shadows

Were all my spring.  Was there another spring? 
I knew their noisy desolation well,
Drinking it up as a child drinks everything,

Knowing no other world than brick and stone,
With one rich memory of the earth all bright. 
Now all is fallen into oblivion—­

All that I was, in years of school and play,
Things that I hated, things that were delight,
Are all forgotten, or shut all away

Behind a creaking door that opens slow. 
But there’s a child that walks those streets of war,
Hearing his running footsteps as they go

Echoed from house to house, and wondering
At Marlboro’, Waterloo and Trafalgar;
And at night, when the yellow gas lamps fling

Unsteady shadows, singing for company;
Yet loving the lighted dark, and any star
Caught by sharp roofs in a narrow net of sky.

XI

WHEN CHILDHOOD DIED

I can recall the day
  When childhood died. 
I had grown thin and tall
  And eager-eyed.

Such a false happiness
  Had seized me then;
A child, I saw myself
  Man among men.

Now I see that I was
  Ignorant, surprised,
As one for the surgeon’s knife
  Anaesthetized.

So that I did not know
  What loomed before,
Nor how, a child, I became
  A child no more.

The world’s sharpened knife
  Cut round my heart;
Then something was taken
  And flung apart.

I did not, could not know
  What had been done. 
Under some evil drag
  I lived as one