And show thee, reft from the embrace of night,
The barren world, barren of revelry. 
Happy art thou, O Man, happily free,
Who wilt never see
A thousand ages shed their life and light
As petals fall at eventide. 
Thou shalt not see the radiant stars subside
Into the frozen ocean of the Vast,
Nor see thy world absorbed at last
Into a nothingness, an airless void,
Nor see the thoughts that Man has glorified
Swept from the world, and with the world destroyed. 
This have I seen a thousand times repeated,
Unhappy as I am, unhappy God! 
As many times as thou hast greeted
The rising sun against the broad
And tranquil clouds, so many times have I
Greeted the dawn of a new Universe,
And seen the molten stars rehearse
The lives and passions of the stars gone by. 
When worlds are growing old, and there draw nigh
The shadows that shall cover them for ever,
(Shadows like these which doom your ancient sky)
Then to the well that feeds the sacred river
I come, and as the liquid music drips
Far in the ground, I plunge my lips
Deep in forgetfulness, and wash away
All the stains of the old griefs and joys,
That with His lips as smiling as a boy’s,
God may rejoice in His created day.” 
  He stoops and drinks; a moment the cool bell
Pauses its ringing in the well: 
A mist flies up against the dawn; the young winds weep;
Is it too late?  I too would drink, drink deep,
But weariness is on me and I sleep.

Cambridge, 1915

XIII — EPILOGUE

Dawn has come. 
Faint hazes quiver with the faltering light;
Some airy skein draws in the shadows from
The broken forest where the war has passed,
The Forest Terrible, the grey despair,
The forest broken in the withering blight
Of the lean years,—­the blight, the years, have passed,
Leaving a solitary watcher there,
Silence at last.

She watches by the dead,
Her deep white shadow overspreads their faces. 
Here in the outland places,
She watches by the dead.

How many dawns have driven her afar
With the loosed thunder of tempestuous wrong! 
Today she will remain.

Silence familiar to the morning star,
Standing, her finger to her lips,
Hushing the battle-cry, the victor’s song,
Standing inviolate above the slain.

The fugitive sunlight slips
Over the fragment of a cloud,
And the sky opens wide,
Behold the dawn!

Where is the nightmare now? the angry-browed? 
The lowering imminence—­the bloody eyed? 
Fled, as the threat of midnight, fled away,
Gone, after four dark timeless ages, gone. 
Hail the day!

Silence, robed in the morning’s golden fleece,
Folding the world’s torn wings to stillness, giving
Peace to the dead, and to the living,
Peace.

Tours, 1918