Page:For remembrance, soldier poets who have fallen in the war, Adcock, 1920.djvu/146

110

Bend over me in light

As holy angels do.

For my last thought this night,

My last prayer, were for you...

in 'The Meaning of Love,' or 'Late Autumn,' with its picturesque delicacy and sense of atmosphere—

That other, darker picture comes in his last letter home, written two days before he fell between Souchez and Givenchy, when, after describing near-by valleys and crests and upland copses that are 'a delight to the eye,' he goes on: 'But on one's way to the line there is the ghastly slope of ——, where lines of German corpses lie unburied, naked bones, curls of hair clinging to bleached skulls, lipless teeth, boots which the spoiler has relinquished, so set are the stiffened legs and feet within them. We harden our hearts. The French artillery captain, who accompanies us, speaks my mind: "I never let myself feel sorrow over dead