Poems of the Past and the Present | Page 5

safely, in brief time or
long.
VII
0. Yet, voices haunting us, daunting us, taunting us, Hint in the
night-time when life beats are low Other and graver things . . .
Hold we to braver things, Wait we, in trust, what Time's fulness
shall show.
AT THE WAR OFFICE, LONDON
(Affixing the Lists of Killed
and Wounded: December, 1899)
I
Last year I called this world of gain-givings
The darkest thinkable,
and questioned sadly
If my own land could heave its pulse less gladly,

So charged it seemed with circumstance whence springs
The tragedy of things.
II

Yet at that censured time no heart was rent
Or feature blanched of
parent, wife, or daughter
By hourly blazoned sheets of listed
slaughter;
Death waited Nature's wont; Peace smiled unshent
From Ind to Occident.
A CHRISTMAS GHOST-STORY
South of the Line, inland from far Durban,
A mouldering soldier
lies--your countryman.
Awry and doubled up are his gray bones,

And on the breeze his puzzled phantom moans
Nightly to clear
Canopus: "I would know
By whom and when the
All-Earth-gladdening Law
Of Peace, brought in by that Man
Crucified,
Was ruled to be inept, and set aside?
And what of logic or of truth appears
In tacking 'Anno Domini' to the
years?
Near twenty-hundred livened thus have hied,
But tarries yet
the Cause for which He died."
Christmas-eve, 1899.
THE DEAD DRUMMER
I
They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined--just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around;
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.
II
Young Hodge the Drummer never knew -

Fresh from his Wessex home -
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.
III
Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge for ever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
Grow up a Southern tree.
And strange-eyed constellations reign
His stars eternally.
A WIFE IN LONDON
(December, 1899)
I--THE TRAGEDY
She sits in the tawny vapour
That the City lanes have uprolled,
Behind whose webby fold on fold

Like a waning taper
The street-lamp glimmers cold.
A messenger's knock cracks smartly,
Flashed news is in her hand
Of meaning it dazes to understand

Though shaped so shortly:
He--has fallen--in the far South Land . . .
II--THE IRONY
'Tis the morrow; the fog hangs thicker,

The postman nears and goes:
A letter is brought whose lines disclose

By the firelight flicker
His hand, whom the worm now knows:
Fresh--firm--penned in highest feather -
Page-full of his hoped return,
And of home-planned jaunts by brake
and burn
In the summer weather,
And of new love that they would learn.
THE SOULS OF THE SLAIN
I
The thick lids of Night closed upon me
Alone at the Bill
Of the Isle by the Race {1} -
Many-caverned, bald,
wrinkled of face -
And with darkness and silence the spirit was on me
To brood and be still.
II
No wind fanned the flats of the ocean,
Or promontory sides,
Or the ooze by the strand,
Or the
bent-bearded slope of the land,
Whose base took its rest amid
everlong motion
Of criss-crossing tides.
III
Soon from out of the Southward seemed nearing
A whirr, as of wings
Waved by mighty-vanned flies,
Or by

night-moths of measureless size,
And in softness and smoothness
well-nigh beyond hearing
Of corporal things.
IV
And they bore to the bluff, and alighted -
A dim-discerned train
Of sprites without mould,
Frameless souls
none might touch or might hold -
On the ledge by the turreted lantern,
farsighted
By men of the main.
V
And I heard them say "Home!" and I knew them
For souls of the felled
On the earth's nether bord
Under Capricorn,
whither they'd warred,
And I neared in my awe, and gave heedfulness
to them
With breathings inheld.
VI
Then, it seemed, there approached from the northward
A senior soul-flame
Of the like filmy hue:
And he met them and
spake: "Is it you,
O my men?" Said they, "Aye! We bear homeward
and hearthward
To list to our fame!"
VII
"I've flown there before you," he said then:

"Your households are well;
But--your kin linger less
On your glory
arid war-mightiness
Than on dearer things."--"Dearer?" cried these
from the dead then,
"Of what do they tell?"
VIII
"Some mothers muse sadly, and murmur
Your doings as boys -
Recall the quaint ways
Of your babyhood's
innocent days.
Some pray that, ere dying, your faith had grown
firmer,
And higher your joys.
IX
"A father broods: 'Would I had set him
To some humble trade,
And so slacked his high fire,
And his
passionate martial desire;
Had told him no stories to woo him and
whet him
To this due crusade!"
X
"And, General, how hold out our sweethearts,
Sworn loyal as doves?"
--"Many mourn; many think
It is not
unattractive to prink
Them in sables for heroes. Some fickle and fleet
hearts
Have found them new loves."
XI

"And our wives?" quoth another resignedly,
"Dwell they on our deeds?"
--"Deeds of home; that live yet
Fresh as
new--deeds of fondness or fret;
Ancient words that were kindly
expressed or