Page:For remembrance, soldier poets who have fallen in the war, Adcock, 1920.djvu/79

Rh ; some thoughtful lines on reincarnation, and a song or two in lighter moods. When the war does enter into his verse, as in 'Home Thoughts in Laventie,' it comes somewhat as a wonderful dream-pedlar, bringing dreams that are not of itself:

Green gardens in Laventie!

Soldiers only know the street

Where the mud is churned and splashed about

By battle-wending feet;

And yet beside one stricken house there is a glimpse of grass.

Look for it when you pass.

Beyond the church whose pitted spire

Seems balanced on a strand

Of swaying stone and tottering brick

Two roofless ruins stand.

And here behind the wreckage where the back wall should have been

We found a garden green....

So all among the vivid blades

Of soft and tender grass

We lay, nor heard the limber wheels

That pass and ever pass

In noisy continuity, until their stony rattle

Seems in itself a battle.

At length we rose up from this ease

Of tranquil, happy mind,