Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/365

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HE ward is strangely hushed to-day;

The morning nurses sober-eyed

Regard the screened place where, they say,

At midnight, Number Twenty died.

So many weeks of weary hours

He lay and heard our busy tread,

As patient as the wistful flowers

That spent their fragrance near his bed—

So oft we saw in passing by,

His questing glance, his dreamful face,

We shall regard resentfully

The stranger that must fill his place. ..

What vision rapt him through the dim

Slow hours? Like wraiths upon the sight

All common changes seemed to him

Of dawn and day, of eve and night;

Each brought its sounds of whispering feet,

Its faces, glimmering, ghost by ghost—

Yet scarce he left his dream to greet

Those comers who would mourn him most.

For in his sight shone such a star

As, after tempests loud and rude,

To sea-worn eyes foretells some far

Relief—a port of quietude;

And, homing to that bourn, he heard

The call so many wanderers know

From meadows lulled by bee and bird

Where he was happy long ago—

Where simple things were ecstasy,

And life a game among the flowers,

And every hurt and malady

Was healed by gentler hands than ours. ..

Not jacinth wall and golden street

Perchance so rapt his dying gaze;

For him, Heaven's wonder was the sweet

Lost wonder of his childhood's days;