Page:A father of women, and other poems, Meynell, 1917.djvu/13

 LENGTH OF DAYS

TO THE EARLY DEAD IN BATTLE

HERE is no length of days

But yours, boys who were children once. Of old

The Past beset you in your childish ways,

With sense of Time untold!

What have you then forgone?

A history? This you had. Or memories?

These, too, you had of your far-distant dawn.

No further dawn seems his,

The old man who shares with you,

But has no more, no more. Time's mystery

Did once for him the most that it can do:

He has had infancy.

And all his dreams, and all

His loves for mighty Nature, sweet and few,

Are but the dwindling past he can recall

Of what his childhood knew.

He counts not any more

His brief, his present years. But O he knows

How far apart the summers were of yore,

How far apart the snows.

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