Page:Marlborough and other poems, Sorley, 1919.djvu/24

 II

STONES

field is almost white with stones

That cumber all its thirsty crust.

And underneath, I know, are bones,

And all around is death and dust.

And if you love a livelier hue—

O, if you love the youth of year,

When all is clean and green and new,

Depart. There is no summer here.

Albeit, to me there lingers yet

In this forbidding stony dress

The impotent and dim regret

For some forgotten restlessness.

Dumb, imperceptibly astir,

These relics of an ancient race,

These men, in whom the dead bones were

Still fortifying their resting-place.

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