Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/48



Ah, who may trace this tranquil loveliness

In verse felicitous?—no measure tells;

But gazing on her bosom we can guess

Why men strike hard for England in red hells,

Falling on dreams, 'mid Death's extreme caress,

Of English daisies dancing in English dells. George Herbert Clarke

SWEET ENGLAND

HEARD a boy that climbed up Dover's Hill

Singing Sweet England, sweeter for his song.

The notes crept muffled through the copse, but still

Sharply recalled the things forgotten long,

The music that my own boy's lips had known,

Singing, and old airs on a wild flute blown.

And other hills, more grim and lonely far,

And valleys empty of these orchard trees;

A sheep-pond filled with the moon, a single star

I had watched by night searching the wreckful seas;

And all the streets and streets that childhood knew

In years when London streets were all my view.

And I remembered how that song I heard,

Sweet England, sung by children on May-day,

Nor any song was sweeter of a bird

Than that half-grievous air from children gay—

For then, as now, youth made the sadness bright,

Till the words, Sweet, Sweet England, shone with light.

Now, listening, I forgot how men yet fought

For this same England, till the song was done

And no sound lingered but the lark's, that brought

New music down from fields of cloud and sun,

Or the sad lapwing's over fields of green

Crying beneath the copse, near but unseen.