RECONCILIATION

When you are standing at your hero’s grave,
Or near some homeless village where he died,
Remember, through your heart’s rekindling pride,
The German soldiers who were loyal and brave.

Men fought like brutes; and hideous things were done: 
And you have nourished hatred, harsh and blind. 
But in that Golgotha perhaps you’ll find
The mothers of the men who killed your son.

November, 1918.

MEMORIAL TABLET

(GREAT WAR)

Squire nagged and bullied till I went to fight
(Under Lord Derby’s scheme).  I died in hell—­
(They called it Passchendaele); my wound was slight,
And I was hobbling back, and then a shell
Burst slick upon the duck-boards; so I fell
Into the bottomless mud, and lost the light.

In sermon-time, while Squire is in his pew,
He gives my gilded name a thoughtful stare;
For though low down upon the list, I’m there: 
“In proud and glorious memory”—­that’s my due. 
Two bleeding years I fought in France for Squire;
I suffered anguish that he’s never guessed;
Once I came home on leave; and then went west. 
What greater glory could a man desire?

THE DEATH-BED

He drowsed and was aware of silence heaped
Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls;
Aqueous like floating rays of amber light,
Soaring and quivering in the wings of sleep,—­
Silence and safety; and his mortal shore
Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death.

Some one was holding water to his mouth. 
He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped
Through crimson gloom to darkness; and forgot
The opiate throb and ache that was his wound. 
Water—­calm, sliding green above the weir;
Water—­a sky-lit alley for his boat,
Bird-voiced, and bordered with reflected flowers
And shaken hues of summer:  drifting down,
He dipped contented oars, and sighed, and slept.

Night, with a gust of wind, was in the ward,
Blowing the curtain to a glimmering curve. 
Night.  He was blind; he could not see the stars
Glinting among the wraiths of wandering cloud;
Queer blots of colour, purple, scarlet, green,
Flickered and faded in his drowning eyes.

Rain; he could hear it rustling through the dark;
Fragrance and passionless music woven as one;
Warm rain on drooping roses; pattering showers
That soak the woods; not the harsh rain that sweeps
Behind the thunder, but a trickling peace
Gently and slowly washing life away.

* * * * *

He stirred, shifting his body; then the pain
Leaped like a prowling beast, and gripped and tore
His groping dreams with grinding claws and fangs. 
But some one was beside him; soon he lay
Shuddering because that evil thing had passed. 
And Death, who’d stepped toward him, paused and stared.