To Victory

[TO EDMUND GOSSE]

RETURN to greet me, colours that were my joy,
Not in the woeful crimson of men slain,

But shining as a garden; come with the streaming
Banners of dawn and sundown after rain.

I want to fill my gaze with blue and silver,
Radiance through living roses, spires of green
Rising in young-limbed copse and lovely wood
Where the hueless wind passes and cries unseen.

I am not sad; only I long for lustre,

Tired of the greys and browns and the leafless ash.
I would have hours that move like a glitter of dancers
Far from the angry guns that boom and flash.

Return, musical, gay with blossom and fleetness,
Days when my sight shall be clear and my heart
rejoice;
Come from the sea with breadth of approaching
brightness,

When the blithe wind laughs on the hills with

uplifted voice.

し

When I'm among a Blaze of Lights

WHEN I'm among a blaze of lights,
With tawdry music and cigars

And women dawdling through delights,
And officers at cocktail bars,—
Sometimes I think of garden nights
And elm trees nodding at the stars.

I dream of a small firelit room
With yellow candles burning straight,
And glowing pictures in the gloom,
And kindly books that hold me late.
Of things like these I love to think
When I can never be alone:

Then someone says, "Another drink?"-
And turns my living heart to stone.

Golgotha

THROUGH darkness curves a spume of falling flares
That flood the field with shallow, blanching light.
The huddled sentry stares

On gloom at war with white,

And white receding slow, submerged in gloom. Guns into mimic thunder burst and boom, And mirthless laughter rakes the whistling night. The sentry keeps his watch where no one stirs But the brown rats, the nimble scavengers.

A Mystic as Soldier

I LIVED my days apart,
Dreaming fair songs for God,
By the glory in my heart

Covered and crowned and shod.

Now God is in the strife,

And I must seek Him there,

Where death outnumbers life,

And fury smites the air.

I walk the secret way
With anger in my brain.
O music through my clay,
When will you sound again?

The Kiss

To these I turn, in these I trust;
Brother Lead and Sister Steel.
To his blind power I make appeal;
I guard her beauty clean from rust.

He spins and burns and loves the air,
And splits a skull to win my praise;
But up the nobly marching days
She glitters naked, cold and fair.

Sweet Sister, grant your soldier this;
That in good fury he may feel

The body where he sets his heel

Quail from your downward darting kiss.