Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/349

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Shall climb the tree the fruit grew on

To see which road it is you've gone.

How shall I plan to overtake

Those wings of yours? And I must make

In time to welcome you, a proud

White castle of some mountain cloud—

But no more now. . . . The old clock clangs

Somewhere within. A veery hangs

Small golden wreaths along the alder,

And mother Robin's babies called her

Just now from their leaf-hidden room,

And sunset roses are in bloom. Grace Hazard Conkling Lake Champlain, June, 1918.

OSSED like a falcon from the hunter's wrist,

A sweeping plunge, a sudden shattering noise,

And thou hast dared, with a long spiral twist,

The elastic stairway to the rising sun.

Peril below thee, and above, peril

Within thy car; but peril cannot daunt

Thy peerless heart: gathering wing and poise,

Thy plane transfigured, and thy motor-chant

Subduèd to a whisper—then a silence,—

And thou art but a disembodied venture

In the void.

But Death, who has learned to fly,

Still matchless when his work is to be done,

Met thee between the armies and the sun;

Thy speck of shadow faltered in the sky;

Then thy dead engine and thy broken wings

Drooped through the arc and passed in fire,

A wreath of smoke—a breathless exhalation.

But ere that came a vision sealed thine eyes,