Page:Lollingdon Downs and other poems, Masefield, 1917.djvu/13

 LOLLINGDON DOWNS AND OTHER POEMS

I

So I have known this life, These beads of coloured days, This self the string. What is this thing?

Not beauty; no; not greed, O, not indeed; Not all, though much; Its colour is not such.

It has no eyes to see, It has no ears, It is a red hour's war Followed by tears.

It is an hour of time, An hour of road, Flesh is its goad, Yet, in the sorrowing lands, Women and men take hands. 7