In Flanders Fields | Page 6

ever lacks to say,
"How
have ye fared?" They answer him, the most,
"This lodging place is
other than we sought;
We had intended farther, but the gloom
Came
on apace, and found us ere we thought:
Yet will we lodge. Thou hast
abundant room."
Within sit haggard men that speak no word,
No fire gleams their
cheerful welcome shed;
No voice of fellowship or strife is heard

But silence of a multitude of dead.
"Naught can I offer ye," quoth
Death, "but rest!"
And to his chamber leads each tired guest.
Equality
I saw a King, who spent his life to weave
Into a nation all his great
heart thought,
Unsatisfied until he should achieve
The grand ideal
that his manhood sought;
Yet as he saw the end within his reach,


Death took the sceptre from his failing hand,
And all men said, "He
gave his life to teach
The task of honour to a sordid land!"
Within
his gates I saw, through all those years,
One at his humble toil with
cheery face,
Whom (being dead) the children, half in tears,

Remembered oft, and missed him from his place.
If he be greater that
his people blessed
Than he the children loved, God knoweth best.
Anarchy
I saw a city filled with lust and shame,
Where men, like wolves,
slunk through the grim half-light; And sudden, in the midst of it, there
came
One who spoke boldly for the cause of Right.
And speaking, fell before that brutish race
Like some poor wren that
shrieking eagles tear,
While brute Dishonour, with her bloodless face

Stood by and smote his lips that moved in prayer.
"Speak not of God! In centuries that word
Hath not been uttered! Our
own king are we."
And God stretched forth his finger as He heard

And o'er it cast a thousand leagues of sea.
Disarmament
One spake amid the nations, "Let us cease
From darkening with strife
the fair World's light,
We who are great in war be great in peace.

No longer let us plead the cause by might."
But from a million British graves took birth
A silent voice -- the
million spake as one --
"If ye have righted all the wrongs of earth

Lay by the sword! Its work and ours is done."
The Dead Master
Amid earth's vagrant noises, he caught the note sublime:
To-day
around him surges from the silences of Time
A flood of nobler music,
like a river deep and broad,
Fit song for heroes gathered in the

banquet-hall of God.
The Harvest of the Sea
The earth grows white with harvest; all day long
The sickles gleam,
until the darkness weaves
Her web of silence o'er the thankful song

Of reapers bringing home the golden sheaves.
The wave tops whiten on the sea fields drear,
And men go forth at
haggard dawn to reap;
But ever 'mid the gleaners' song we hear
The
half-hushed sobbing of the hearts that weep.
The Dying of Pere Pierre
". . . with two other priests; the same night he died, and was buried by
the shores of the lake that bears his name."
Chronicle.
"Nay, grieve not that ye can no honour give
To these poor bones that
presently must be
But carrion; since I have sought to live
Upon
God's earth, as He hath guided me,
I shall not lack! Where would ye
have me lie?
High heaven is higher than cathedral nave:
Do men
paint chancels fairer than the sky?"
Beside the darkened lake they
made his grave,
Below the altar of the hills; and night
Swung
incense clouds of mist in creeping lines
That twisted through the
tree-trunks, where the light
Groped through the arches of the silent
pines:
And he, beside the lonely path he trod,
Lay, tombed in
splendour, in the House of God.
Eventide
The day is past and the toilers cease;
The land grows dim 'mid the
shadows grey,
And hearts are glad, for the dark brings peace
At the close of day.

Each weary toiler, with lingering pace,
As he homeward turns, with
the long day done,
Looks out to the west, with the light on his face
Of the setting sun.
Yet some see not (with their sin-dimmed eyes)
The promise of rest in
the fading light;
But the clouds loom dark in the angry skies
At the fall of night.
And some see only a golden sky
Where the elms their welcoming
arms stretch wide
To the calling rooks, as they homeward fly
At the eventide.
It speaks of peace that comes after strife,
Of the rest He sends to the
hearts He tried,
Of the calm that follows the stormiest life --
God's eventide.
Upon Watts' Picture "Sic Transit"
"What I spent I had; what I saved, I lost; what I gave, I have."
But yesterday the tourney, all the eager joy of life,
The waving of the
banners, and the rattle of the spears,
The clash of sword and harness,
and the madness of the strife; To-night begin the silence and the peace
of endless years.
(One sings within.)
But yesterday the glory and the prize,
And best of all, to lay it at her
feet,
To find my guerdon