Page:For remembrance, soldier poets who have fallen in the war, Adcock, 1920.djvu/226

180 the spring will yet return and all be well again. But how is it with those to whom now all seasons are as one? Buried so far from home, with their dearest dreams unsatisfied, do no blind longings reach down to them still and trouble them with vain regrets? A haunting fancy came to Walter Wilkinson, the adopted son of Mrs. William Sharpe, that the spring which brought life back to all the earth wakens old yearnings after lost happiness in the dust of his comrades who are dead, and he could hear their voices in the silence:

Peace! Vex us not—we are the Dead!

We are the Dead for England slain.

(O England and the English Spring,

The English Spring, the Spring-tide rain:

Ah, God, dear God, in England now!)

Peace! Vex us not; we are the Dead!

The snows of Death are on our brow:

Peace! Vex us not!

Brothers, the footfalls of the year

(The maiden month 's in England now!)—

I feel them pass above my head:

Alas, they echo on my heart!

(Ah, God, dear God, in England now!)—

Peace! Vex me not, for I am dead:

The snows of Death are on my brow:

Peace! Vex me not!