Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/340

 THE AIRMEN

IN MEMORIAM A.H.

HE wind had blown away the rain

That all day long had soaked the level plain.

Against the horizon's fiery wrack,

The sheds loomed black.

And higher, in their tumultuous concourse met,

The streaming clouds, shot-riddled banners, wet

With the flickering storm,

Drifted and smouldered, warm

With flashes sent

From the lower firmament.

And they concealed—

They only here and there through rifts revealed

A hidden sanctuary of fire and light,

A city of chrysolite.

We looked and laughed and wondered, and I said:

That orange sea, those oriflammes outspread

Were like the fanciful imaginings

That the young painter flings

Upon the canvas bold,

Such as the sage and the old

Make mock at, saying it could never be;