Counter-Attack and Other Poems | Page 7

his thong with volleying
crack,--
All the clean thrill of autumn in his blood,
And hunting
surging through him like a flood
In joyous welcome from the
untroubled past;
While the war drifts away, forgotten at last.
Now a red, sleepy sun above the rim
Of twilight stares along the quiet
weald,
And the kind, simple country shines revealed
In solitudes of
peace, no longer dim.
The old horse lifts his face and thanks the light,

Then stretches down his head to crop the green.
All things that he
has loved are in his sight;
The places where his happiness has been

Are in his eyes, his heart, and they are good.

Hark! there's the horn: they're drawing the Big Wood.
TO ANY DEAD OFFICER
Well, how are things in Heaven? I wish you'd say,
Because I'd like to
know that you're all right.
Tell me, have you found everlasting day,

Or been sucked in by everlasting night?
For when I shut my eyes
your face shows pain;
I hear you make some cheery old remark--
I
can rebuild you in my brain,
Though you've gone out patrolling in the

dark.
You hated tours of trenches; you were proud
Of nothing more than
having good years to spend;
Longed to get home and join the careless
crowd
Of chaps who work in peace with Time for friend.
That's all
washed out now. You're beyond the wire:
No earthly chance can send
you crawling back;
You've finished with machine-gun fire--

Knocked over in a hopeless dud-attack.
Somehow I always thought you'd get done in,
Because you were so
desperate keen to live:
You were all out to try and save your skin,

Well knowing how much the world had got to give.
You joked at
shells and talked the usual "shop,"
Stuck to your dirty job and did it
fine:
With "Jesus Christ! when will it stop?
Three years... It's hell
unless we break their line."
So when they told me you'd been left for dead
I wouldn't believe
them, feeling it must be true.
Next week the bloody Roll of Honour
said
"Wounded and missing"--(That's the thing to do
When lads are
left in shell-holes dying slow,
With nothing but blank sky and
wounds that ache,
Moaning for water till they know
It's night, and
then it's not worth while to wake!)

Good-bye, old lad! Remember me to God,
And tell Him that our
Politicians swear
They won't give in till Prussian Rule's been trod

Under the Heel of England... Are you there? ...
Yes ... and the War
won't end for at least two years;
But we've got stacks of men... I'm
blind with tears,
Staring into the dark. Cheero!
I wish they'd killed
you in a decent show.
SICK LEAVE
When I'm asleep, dreaming and lulled and warm,--
They come, the
homeless ones, the noiseless dead.
While the dim charging breakers

of the storm
Bellow and drone and rumble overhead,
Out of the
gloom they gather about my bed.
They whisper to my heart; their
thoughts are mine.
"Why are you here with all your watches ended?

From Ypres to Frise we sought you in the Line."
In bitter safety I
awake, unfriended;
And while the dawn begins with slashing rain
I
think of the Battalion in the mud.
"When are you going out to them
again?
Are they not still your brothers through our blood?"
BANISHMENT
I am banished from the patient men who fight.
They smote my heart
to pity, built my pride.
Shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side,

They trudged away from life's broad wealds of light.
Their wrongs
were mine; and ever in my sight
They went arrayed in honour. But
they died,--
Not one by one: and mutinous I cried
To those who
sent them out into the night.
The darkness tells how vainly I have striven
To free them from the pit
where they must dwell
In outcast gloom convulsed and jagged and
riven
By grappling guns. Love drove me to rebel.
Love drives me
back to grope with them through hell;
And in their tortured eyes I
stand forgiven.
SONG-BOOKS OF THE WAR
In fifty years, when peace outshines
Remembrance of the battle lines,

Adventurous lads will sigh and cast
Proud looks upon the
plundered past.
On summer morn or winter's night,
Their hearts will
kindle for the fight,
Reading a snatch of soldier-song,
Savage and
jaunty, fierce and strong;
And through the angry marching rhymes

Of blind regret and haggard mirth,
They'll envy us the dazzling times

When sacrifice absolved our earth.
Some ancient man with silver locks
Will lift his weary face to say:

"War was a fiend who stopped our clocks
Although we met him grim

and gay."
And then he'll speak of Haig's last drive,
Marvelling that
any came alive
Out of the shambles that men built
And smashed, to
cleanse the world of guilt.
But the boys, with grin and sidelong
glance,
Will think, "Poor grandad's day is done."
And dream of
those who fought in France
And lived in time to share the fun.
THRUSHES
Tossed on the glittering air they soar and skim,
Whose voices make
the emptiness of light
A windy palace. Quavering from the brim
Of
dawn, and bold with song at edge of night,
They clutch their leafy
pinnacles and sing
Scornful of man, and from his toils aloof
Whose