The New Morning | Page 7

sea's rising, The boat must be lightened. He's dead. He must go."_
See--quick--by that flash, where the bitter foam tosses,?The cloud of white faces, in the black open boat,?And the wild pleading woman that clasps her dead lover?And wraps her loose hair round his breast and his throat.
_"Come, lady, he's dead." "No, I feel his heart beating.?He's living, I know. But he's numbed with the cold.?See, I'm wrapping my hair all around him to warm him"----?--"No. We can't keep the dead, dear. Come, loosen your hold._
_"Come. Loosen your fingers."--"O God, let me keep him!"_?O, hide it, black night! Let the winds have their way!?For there are no voices or ghosts from that darkness,?To fret the bare seas at the breaking of day.
PEACE IN A PALACE
"You were weeping in the night," said the Emperor,?"Weeping in your sleep, I am told."?"It was nothing but a dream," said the Empress;?But her face grew gray and old.?"You thought you saw our German God defeated?"?"Oh, no!" she said. "I saw no lightnings fall.?I dreamed of a whirlpool of green water,?Where something had gone down. That was all.
_"All but the whimper of the sea gulls flying,?Endlessly round and round,?Waiting for the faces, the faces from the darkness,?The dreadful rising faces of the drowned._
"It was nothing but a dream," said the Empress.?"I thought I was walking on the sea;?And the foam rushed up in a wild smother,?And a crowd of little faces looked at me.
They were drowning! They were drowning," said the Empress,?"And they stretched their feeble arms to the sky;?But the worst was--they mistook me for their mother,?And cried as my children used to cry.
_"Nothing but a whimper of the sea-gulls flying,?Endlessly round and round,?With the cruel yellow beaks that were waiting for the faces, The little floating faces of the drowned."_
"It was nothing but a dream," said the Emperor,?"So why should you weep, dear, eh?"--?"Oh, I saw the red letters on a life belt?That the green sea washed my way!"--?"What were they?" said the Emperor. "What were they?"--?"Some of them were hidden," said the Empress,?"But I plainly saw the L and the U!"?"In God's name, stop!" said the Emperor.?"You told me that it was not true!
_"Told me that you dreamed of the sea gulls flying,?Endlessly round and round,?Waiting for the faces, and the eyes in the faces,?The eyes of the children that we drowned._
"Kiss me and forget it," said the Emperor,?"Dry your tears on the tassel of my sword.?I am going to offer peace to my people,?And abdicate, perhaps, as overlord.?I shall now take up My Cross as Count of Prussia--?Which is not a heavy burden, you'll agree.?Why, before the twenty million dead are rotten?There'll be yachting days again for you and me.?Cheer up!?It would mean a rope for anyone but Me."
_"Oh, take care!" said the Empress. "They are flying,?Endlessly round and round.?They have finished with the faces, the dreadful little faces, The little eyeless faces of the drowned."_
THE VINDICTIVE
How should we praise those lads of the old _Vindictive_?Who looked Death straight in the eyes,?Till his gaze fell,?In those red gates of hell?
England, in her proud history, proudly enrolls them,?And the deep night in her remembering skies?With purer glory?Shall blazon their grim story.
There were no throngs to applaud that hushed adventure.?They were one to a thousand on that fierce emprise.?The shores they sought?Were armoured, past all thought.
O, they knew fear, be assured, as the brave must know it,?With youth and its happiness bidding their last good-byes; Till thoughts, more dear?Than life, cast out all fear.
For if, as we think, they remembered the brown-roofed homesteads, And the scent of the hawthorn hedges when daylight dies,
Old happy places,?Young eyes and fading faces;
One dream was dearer that night than the best of their boyhood, One hope more radiant than any their hearts could prize.?The touch of your hand,?The light of your face, England!
So, age to age shall tell how they sailed through the darkness Where, under those high, austere, implacable stars,?Not one in ten?Might look for a dawn again.
They saw the ferry-boats, _Iris_ and _Daffodil_, creeping?Darkly as clouds to the shimmering mine-strewn bars,?Flash into light!?Then thunder reddened the night.
The wild white swords of the search-lights blinded and stabbed them, The sharp black shadows fought in fantastic wars.?Black waves leapt whitening,?Red decks were washed with lightning.
But, under the twelve-inch guns of the black land-batteries The hacked bright hulk, in a glory of crackling spars,?Moved to her goal?Like an immortal soul;
That, while the raw rent flesh in a furnace is tortured,?Reigns by a law no agony ever can shake,?And shines in power?Above all shocks of the hour.
O, there, while the decks ran blood, and the star-shells lightened The old broken ship that the enemy never could break,?Swept through the fire?And grappled her heart's desire.
There, on a wreck that blazed with the soul of England,?The lads that died in the dark for