Counter-Attack and Other Poems | Page 8

heart's a haunted woodland whispering;
Whose thoughts return on
tempest-baffled wing;
Who hears the cry of God in everything,
And
storms the gate of nothingness for proof.
AUTUMN
October's bellowing anger breaks and cleaves
The bronzed battalions
of the stricken wood
In whose lament I hear a voice that grieves
For
battle's fruitless harvest, and the feud
Of outraged men. Their lives
are like the leaves
Scattered in flocks of ruin, tossed and blown

Along the westering furnace flaring red.
O martyred youth and
manhood overthrown,
The burden of your wrongs is on my head.
INVOCATION
Come down from heaven to meet me when my breath
Chokes, and
through drumming shafts of stifling death
I stumble toward escape, to
find the door
Opening on morn where I may breathe once more

Clear cock-crow airs across some valley dim
With whispering trees.
While dawn along the rim
Of night's horizon flows in lakes of fire,

Come down from heaven's bright hill, my song's desire.
Belov'd and faithful, teach my soul to wake
In glades deep-ranked

with flowers that gleam and shake
And flock your paths with wonder.
In your gaze
Show me the vanquished vigil of my days.
Mute in
that golden silence hung with green,
Come down from heaven and
bring me in your eyes
Remembrance of all beauty that has been,

And stillness from the pools of Paradise.
REPRESSION OF WAR EXPERIENCE
Now light the candles; one; two; there's a moth;
What silly beggars
they are to blunder in
And scorch their wings with glory, liquid
flame--
No, no, not that,--it's bad to think of war,
When thoughts
you've gagged all day come back to scare you; And it's been proved
that soldiers don't go mad
Unless they lose control of ugly thoughts

That drive them out to jabber among the trees.
Now light your pipe; look, what a steady hand,
Draw a deep breath;
stop thinking, count fifteen,
And you're as right as rain...
Why won't it rain? ...
I wish there'd be a thunder-storm to-night,

With bucketsful of water to sluice the dark,
And make the roses hang
their dripping heads.
Books; what a jolly company they are,
Standing so quiet and patient
on their shelves,
Dressed in dim brown, and black, and white, and
green,
And every kind of colour. Which will you read?
Come on; O
do read something; they're so wise.
I tell you all the wisdom of the
world
Is waiting for you on those shelves; and yet
You sit and gnaw
your nails, and let your pipe out,
And listen to the silence: on the
ceiling
There's one big, dizzy moth that bumps and flutters;
And in
the breathless air outside the house
The garden waits for something
that delays.
There must be crowds of ghosts among the trees,--
Not
people killed in battle,--they're in France,--
But horrible shapes in
shrouds--old men who died
Slow, natural deaths,--old men with ugly
souls,
Who wore their bodies out with nasty sins.

You're quiet and peaceful, summering safe at home;
You'd never think there was a bloody war on! ...
O yes, you would ... why, you can hear the guns.
Hark! Thud, thud, thud,--quite soft ... they never cease--
Those whispering guns--O Christ, I want to go out
And screech at them to stop--I'm going crazy;
I'm going stark, staring mad because of the guns.
THE TRIUMPH
When life was a cobweb of stars for Beauty who came
In the whisper
of leaves or a bird's lone cry in the glen, On dawn-lit hills and horizons
girdled with flame
I sought for the triumph that troubles the faces of
men.
With death in the terrible flickering gloom of the fight
I was cruel and
fierce with despair; I was naked and bound; was stricken: and Beauty
returned through the shambles of night; In the faces of men she
returned; and their triumph I found.
SURVIVORS
No doubt they'll soon get well; the shock and strain
Have caused their
stammering, disconnected talk.
Of course they're "longing to go out
again,"--
These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk,

They'll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed
Subjection to the
ghosts of friends who died,--
Their dreams that drip with murder; and
they'll be proud
Of glorious war that shatter'd all their pride ...
Men
who went out to battle, grim and glad;
Children, with eyes that hate
you, broken and mad.
CRAIGLOCKART,
Oct. 1917.
JOY-BELLS
Ring your sweet bells; but let them be farewells
To the green-vista'd

gladness of the past
That changed us into soldiers; swing your bells

To a joyful chime; but let it be the last.
What means this metal in windy belfries hung
When guns are all our
need? Dissolve these bells
Whose tones are tuned for peace: with
martial tongue
Let them cry doom and storm the sun with shells.
Bells are like fierce-browed prelates who proclaim
That "if our Lord
returned He'd fight for us."
So let our bells and bishops do the same,

Shoulder to shoulder with the motor bus.
REMORSE
Lost in the swamp and welter of the pit,
He flounders off the
duck-boards; only he knows
Each flash, and spouting crash,--each
instant lit
When gloom reveals the streaming rain. He goes
Heavily,
blindly on. And, while