Last Poems | Page 5

surely die and never live again.
Oh priestess, what you cry is clear, and sound good sense I think it;
But let the screaming echoes rest, and froth your mouth no more. ‘Tis
true there’s better boose than brine, but he that drowns must drink it;
And oh, my lass, the news is news that men have heard before.
/The King with half the East at heel is marched from lands of morning;
Their fighters drink the rivers up, their shafts benight the air. And he
that stands will die for nought, and home there’s no returning./
The Spartans on the sea-wet rock sat down and combed their hair.
XXVI
The half-moon westers low, my love,
And the wind brings up the rain;
And wide apart lie we, my love,
And seas between the twain.
I know not if it rains, my love,
In the land where you do lie;
And oh, so sound you sleep, my love,
You know no more than I.
XXVII
The sigh that heaves the grasses
Whence thou wilt never rise
Is of the air that passes
And knows not if it sighs.

The diamond tears adorning
Thy low mound on the lea,
Those are the tears of morning,
That weeps, but not for thee.
XXVIII
Now dreary dawns the eastern light,
And fall of eve is drear,
And cold the poor man lies at night,
And so goes out the year.
Little is the luck I’ve had,
And oh, ‘tis comfort small
To think that many another lad
Has had no luck at all.
XXIX
Wake not for the world-heard thunder
Nor the chime that earthquakes toll.
Star may plot in heaven with
planet,
Lightning rive the rock of granite,
Tempest tread the
oakwood under:
Fear not you for flesh nor soul.
Marching, fighting, victory past,

Stretch your limbs in peace at last.
Stir not for the soldiers drilling
Nor the fever nothing cures:
Throb of drum and timbal’s rattle
Call
but man alive to battle,
And the fife with death-notes filling
Screams for blood but not for yours.
Times enough you bled your
best;
Sleep on now, and take your rest.

Sleep, my lad; the French are landed,
London’s burning, Windsor’s down;
Clasp your cloak of earth about
you,
We must man the ditch without you,
March unled and fight
short-handed,
Charge to fall and swim to drown.
Duty, friendship, bravery o’er,

Sleep away, lad; wake no more.
XXX
SINNER’S RUE
I walked alone and thinking,
And faint the nightwind blew
And stirred on mounds at crossways
The flower of sinner’s rue.
Where the roads part they bury
Him that his own hand slays,
And so the weed of sorrow
Springs at the four cross ways.
By night I plucked it hueless,
When morning broke ‘twas blue:
Blue at my breast I fastened
The flower of sinner’s rue.
It seemed a herb of healing,
A balsam and a sign,
Flower of a heart whose trouble
Must have been worse than mine.
Dead clay that did me kindness,

I can do none to you,
But only wear for breastknot
The flower of sinner’s rue.
XXXI
HELL’S GATE
Onward led the road again
Through the sad uncoloured plain
Under
twilight brooding dim,
And along the utmost rim
Wall and rampart
risen to sight
Cast a shadow not of night,
And beyond them seemed
to glow
Bonfires lighted long ago.
And my dark conductor broke

Silence at my side and spoke,
Saying, "You conjecture well:

Yonder is the gate of hell."
Ill as yet the eye could see
The eternal masonry,
But beneath it on
the dark
To and fro there stirred a spark.
And again the sombre
guide
Knew my question, and replied:
"At hell gate the damned in
turn
Pace for sentinel and burn."
Dully at the leaden sky
Staring, and with idle eye
Measuring the
listless plain,
I began to think again.
Many things I thought of then,

Battle, and the loves of men,
Cities entered, oceans crossed,

Knowledge gained and virtue lost,
Cureless folly done and said,

And the lovely way that led
To the slimepit and the mire
And the
everlasting fire.
And against a smoulder dun
And a dawn without a
sun
Did the nearing bastion loom,
And across the gate of gloom

Still one saw the sentry go,
Trim and burning, to and fro,
One for
women to admire
In his finery of fire.
Something, as I watched him
pace,
Minded me of time and place,

Soldiers of another corps

And a sentry known before.
Ever darker hell on high
Reared its strength upon the sky,
And our
football on the track
Fetched the daunting echo back.
But the
soldier pacing still
The insuperable sill,
Nursing his tormented pride,


Turned his head to neither side,
Sunk into himself apart
And the
hell-fire of his heart.
But against our entering in
From the
drawbridge Death and Sin
Rose to render key and sword
To their
father and their lord.
And the portress foul to see
Lifted up her eyes
on me
Smiling, and I made reply:
"Met again, my lass," said I.

Then the sentry turned his head,
Looked, and knew me, and was Ned.
Once he looked, and halted straight,
Set his back against the gate,

Caught his musket to his chin,
While the hive of hell within
Sent
abroad a seething