And many a maiden

Is there, of mortal birth,
Her young eyes laden

With dreams of earth.

Music so piercing wild

And forest-sweet would bring
Silence on blackbirds singing
Their best in the ear of spring.

And many a youth entranced
Moves slow in the dreamy round,
His brave lost feet enchanted

With the rhythm of faery sound.

Oh, many a thrush and blackbird
Would fall to the dewy ground,
And pine away in silence

For envy of such a sound.

So the night through,

In our sad pleasure,

We dance to many a measure
That earth never knew.

Wilfred Owen

STRANGE MEETING

It seemed that out of the battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,

Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,

Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.

And by his smile I knew that sullen hall:

With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
Strange friend," I said, "here is no cause to mourn."
None," said the other, "but the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something has been left
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.

Now men will go content with what we spoiled,
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,

None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;

To miss the march of this retreating world

Into vain citadels that are not walled.

Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels, I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,

Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.

I would have poured my spirit without stint,
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.
I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned

Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now. . .

ARMS AND THE BOY

Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade
How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;
Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash;
And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.

Lend him to stroke these blind blunt bullet-heads
Which long to muzzle in the hearts of lads.
Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth,
Sharp with the sharpness of grief and death.

For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple.
There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple;
And God will grow no talons at his heels,
Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.

THE ANTHEM FOR DOOMED YOUTH

What passing-bells for these who died as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries for them; no prayers or bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs-
The shrill demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-bys.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds.
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

APOLOGIA PRO POEMATE MEO

I too saw God through mud—

The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled.
War brought more glory to their eyes than blood,
And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.

Merry it was to laugh there

Where death becomes absurd and life absurder.
For power was on us as we slashed bones bare
Not to feel sickness or remorse of murder.

I too have dropped off fear

Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon;
And sailed, my spirit surging, light and clear,
Past the entanglement where hopes lay strewn;

And witnessed exultation

Faces that used to curse me, scowl for scowl,
Shine and light up with passion of oblation-
Seraphic for an hour; though they were foul.

I have made fellowships

Untold of happy lovers in old song.

For love is not the binding of fair lips

With the soft silk of eyes that look and long,

By Joy, whose ribbon slips:

But wound with war's hard wire whose stakes are strong; Bound with the bandage of the arm that drips;

Knit in the welding of the rifle-thong.

I have perceived much beauty

In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight;

Heard music in the silentness of duty;

Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate.

Nevertheless, except you share

With them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell,

Whose world is but the trembling of a flare,
And heaven but as the highway for a shell,

You shall not hear their mirth:

You shall not come to think them well content
By any jest of mine. These men are worth
Your tears; you are not worth their merriment.

November, 1917

Josephine Preston Peabody

CRADLE SONG

I

Lord Gabriel, wilt thou not rejoice
When at last a little boy's

Cheek lies heavy as a rose,

And his eyelids close?

Gabriel, when that hush may be,
This sweet hand all heedfully

I'll undo, for thee alone,
From his mother's own.

Then the far blue highways, paven
With the burning stars of heaven,
He shall gladden with the sweet
Hasting of his feet-

Feet so brightly bare and cool,
Leaping, as from pool to pool;
From a little laughing boy
Splashing rainbow joy!

Gabriel, wilt thou understand
How to keep his hovering hand-

Never shut, as in a bond,
From the bright beyond?