Page:More songs by the fighting men, soldier poets, second series, 1917.djvu/105

Charles John Beech Masefield We have feared old Death, but now have we learned our error,

Seeing him there in the mire us so kindly await—

A comrade befitting the hour of a world's fate,

And we look him full in the eyes; we are rid of our last terror.

True that Death is an ill, but the worse ills are many;

Shame and slow rotting, cold and greasy years,

Pride in dishonour—these things hold our fears;

We can play pitch and toss with our lives as a boy with a penny.

We have spent ourselves to win us a lady's favour,

But now the spending is grown to a leaping fire,

And winning for ourselves seems but a strange desire;

Her eyes are remote as stars; her kisses have lost their savour.

We have put life away and spurn the ways of the living;

We have broken with the old selves who gathered and got,

And are free with the freedom of men who have not;

We partake the heroic fervours of giving and again giving.

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