Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/253

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To their high, happy haunts

Silence from us has flown,

She whom we loved of old

And know it now she is gone.

When will she come again,

Though for one second only?

She whom we loved is gone

And the whole world is lonely.

Somewhere lost in the haze

The sun goes down in the cold,

And birds in this evil wood

Chirrup home as of old;

Chirrup, stir and are still

On the high twigs frozen and thin.

There is no more noise of them now,

And the long night sets in.

Of all the wonderful things

That I have seen in the wood,

I marvel most at the birds

And their wonderful quietude.

For a giant smites with his club

All day the tops of the hill,

Sometimes he rests at night,

Oftener he beats them still.

And a dwarf with a grim black mane

Raps with repeated rage

All night in the valley below

On the wooden walls of his cage.

And the elder giants come

Sometimes, tramping from far

Through the weird and flickering light

Made by an earthly star.