Shadows against the sky;And the soul of man and his ecstasiesA night-forgotten cry.Hollow the world! hollow the world!IOLO ANEURIN WILLIAMSFROM A FLEMISH GRAVEYARDJANUARY 1915A year hence may the grass that wavesO'er English men in Flemish graves,Coating this clay with green of peaceAnd softness of a year's increase,Be kind and lithe as English grassTo bend and nod as the winds pass;It was for grass on English hillsThese bore too soon the last of ills.And may the wind be brisk and clean,And singing cheerfully betweenThe bents a pleasant-burdened songTo cheer these English dead along;For English songs and English windsAre they that bred these English minds.And may the circumstantial treesDip, for these dead ones, in the breeze,And make for them their silver playOf spangled boughs each shiny day.Thus may these look above, and seeAnd hear the wind in grass and tree,And watch a lark in heaven stand,And think themselves in their own land.A MONUMENT(AFTER AN ANCIENT FASHION)Traveller, turn a mournful eyeWhere my lady's ashes lie;If thou hast a sweet thine ownPity me, that am alone;—Yet, if thou no lover be,Nor hast been, I'll pity thee.FRANCIS BRETT YOUNGSONG OF THE DARK AGESWe digged our trenches on the downBeside old barrows, and the wetWhite chalk we shovelled from below;It lay like drifts of thawing snowOn parados and parapet;Until a pick neither struck flintNor split the yielding chalky soil,But only calcined human bone:Poor relic of that Age of StoneWhose ossuary was our spoil.Home we marched singing in the rain,And all the while, beneath our song,I mused how many springs should waneAnd still our trenches scar the plain:The monument of an old wrong.But then, I thought, the fair green sodWill wholly cover that white stain,And soften, as it clothes the faceOf those old barrows, every traceOf violence to the patient plain.And careless people, passing byWill speak of both in casual tone:Saying: "You see the toil they madeThe age of iron, pick and spade,Here jostles with the Age of Stone."Yet either from that happier raceWill merit but a passing glance;And they will leave us both alone:Poor savages who wrought in stone—PoorPoor savages who fought in France.BÊTE HUMAINERiding through Ruwu swamp, about sunrise,I saw the world awake; and as the rayTouched the tall grasses where they sleeping lay,Lo, the bright air alive with dragonflies:With brittle wings aquiver, and great eyesPiloting crimson bodies, slender and gay.I aimed at one, and struck it, and it layBroken and lifeless, with fast-fading dyes ...Then my soul sickened with a sudden painAnd horror, at my own careless cruelty,That in an idle moment I had slainA creature whose sweet life it is to fly:Like beasts that prey with tooth and claw ...Nay, theyMust slay to live, but what excuse had I?THE GIFTMarching on Tanga, marching the parch'd plainOf wavering spear-grass past Pangani river,England came to me—me who had always ta'enBut never given before—England, the giver,In a vision of three poplar-trees that shiverOn still evenings of summer, after rain,By Slapton Ley, where reed-beds start and quiverWhen scarce a ripple moves the upland grain.Then I thanked God that now I had suffered painAnd, as the parch'd plain, thirst, and lain awakeShivering all night through till cold daybreak:In that I count these sufferings my gainAnd her acknowledgment. Nay, more, would fainSuffer as many more for her sweet sake.THE LEANING ELMBefore my window, in days of winter hoarHuddled a mournful wood;Smooth pillars of beech, domed chestnut, sycamore,In stony sleep they stood:But you, unhappy elm, the angry westHad chosen from the rest,Flung broken on your brothers' branches bare,And left you leaning thereSo dead that when the breath of winter castWild snow upon the blast,The other living branches, downward bowed,Shook free their crystal shroudAnd shed upon your blackened trunk beneathTheir livery of death......On windless nights between the beechen barsI watched cold starsThrob whitely in the sky, and dreamilyWondered if any life lay locked in thee:If still the hidden sap secretly movedAs water in the icy winterbourneFloweth unheard:And half I pitied you your trance forlorn:You could not hear, I thought, the voice of any bird,The shadowy cries of bats in dim twilightOr cool voices of owls crying by night ...Hunting by night under the horned moon:Yet half I envied you your wintry swoon,Till, on this morning mild, the sun, new-risenSteals from his misty prison;The frozen fallows glow, the black trees shakenIn a clear flood of sunlight vibrating awaken:And lo, your ravaged hole, beyond beliefSlenderly fledged anew with tender leafAs pale as those twin vanes that break at lastIn a tiny fan above the black beech-mastWhere no blade springeth greenBut pallid bells of the shy helleborine.What is this ecstasy that overwhelmsThe dreaming earth? See, the embrownèd elmsCrowding purple distances warm the depths of the wood:A new-born wind tosses their tassels brown,His white clouds dapple the down:Into a green flame bursting the hedgerows stand.Soon, with banners flying, Spring will walk the land....There is no day for thee, my soul, like this,No spring of lovely words. Nay, even the kissOf mortal love that maketh man divineThis light cannot outshine:Nay, even poets, they whose frail hands catchThe shadow of vanishing beauty, may not matchThis leafy ecstasy. Sweet words may cullSuch magical beauty as time may not destroy;But we, alas, are not more beautiful:We cannot flower in beauty as in joy.We sing, our mused words are sped, and thenPoets are only menWho age, and toil, and sicken ... This maim'd treeMay stand in leaf when I have ceased to be.PROTHALAMIONWhen the evening came my love said to me:Let us go into the garden now that the sky is cool;The garden of black hellebore and rosemaryWhere wild woodruff spills in a milky pool.Low we passed in the twilight, for the wavering heatOf day had waned; and round that shaded plotOf secret beauty the thickets clustered sweet:Here is heaven, our hearts whispered, but our lips spake not.Between that old garden and seas of lazy foamGloomy and beautiful alleys of trees ariseWith spire of cypress and dreamy beechen dome,So dark that our enchanted sight knew nothing but the skiesVeiled with a soft air, drench'd in the roses' muskOr the dusky, dark carnation's breath of clove:No stars burned in their deeps, but through the duskI saw my love's eyes, and they were brimmed with love.No star their secret ravished, no wasting moonMocked the sad transience of those eternal hours:Only the soft unseeing heaven of June,The ghosts of great trees, and the sleeping flowers.For doves that crooned in the leafy noonday nowWere silent; the night-jar sought his secret covers,Nor even a mild sea-whisper moved a creaking bough—Was ever a silence deeper made for lovers?Was ever a moment meeter made for love?Beautiful are your close lips beneath my kiss;And all your yielding sweetness beautiful—Oh, never in all the world was such a night as this!