Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/341

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And you assented also, laughingly,

I wondered what they meant,

That flaming firmament,

Those clouds so grey, so cold, so wet, so warm,

So much of glory and so much of storm,

The end of the world, or the end

Of the war—remoter still to me and you, my friend.

Alas! it meant not this, it meant not that:

It meant that now the last time you and I

Should look at the golden sky,

And the dark fields large and flat,

And smell the evening weather,

And laugh and talk and wonder both together.

The last, last time. We nevermore should meet

In France or London street,

Or fields of home. The desolated space

Of life shall nevermore

Be what it was before.

No one shall take your place.

No other face

Can fill that empty frame.

There is no answer when we call your name.

We cannot hear your step upon the stair.

We turn to speak and find a vacant chair.

Something is broken which we cannot mend.

God has done more than take away a friend

In taking you; for all that we have left

Is bruised and irremediably bereft.

There is none like you. Yet not that alone

Do we bemoan;

But this: that you were greater than the rest,

And better than the best.

O liberal heart fast-rooted to the soil,

O lover of ancient freedom and proud toil,

Friend of the gipsies and all wandering song,

The forest's nursling and the favoured child

Of woodlands wild—