Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/301

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The unseen foe both adds and listens to

The self-same discord, eyed by the same stars.

Deep darkness hides the desolated land,

Save where a sudden flare sails up and bursts

In whitest glare above the wilderness,

And for one instant lights with lurid pallor

The tense, packed faces in the black redoubt. W. S. S. Lyon

BACK TO LONDON: A POEM OF LEAVE

HAVE not wept when I have seen

My stricken comrades die;

I have not wept when we have made

The place where they should lie;

My heart seemed drowned in tears, but still

No tear came to my eye.

There is a time to weep, saith One,

A season to refrain;

How should it ope, this fount of tears,

While I sat in the train,

So that all blurred the landscape moved

Out with the window-pane?

But one short day since I had left

A land upheaved and rent,

Where Spring brings back no bourgeoning,

As Nature's force were spent,

Yet now I travelled in a train

Thro' the kindly land of Kent!

A kindly land, a pleasant land,

As welcome sight to me

As after purgatorial pains

The Plains of Heaven might be,

When the wondrous Goodness that is God

Draws a soul from jeopardy.