Page:Poems (Edward Thomas, 1917).djvu/61

 For washing me cleaner than I have been

Since I was born into this solitude.

Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:

But here I pray that none whom once I loved

Is dying to-night or lying still awake

Solitary, listening to the rain,

Either in pain or thus in sympathy

Helpless among the living and the dead,

Like a cold water among broken reeds,

Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,

Like me who have no love which this wild rain

Has not dissolved except the love of death,

If love it be towards what is perfect and

Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.

"HOME"

was the morning, fair our tempers, and

We had seen nothing fairer than that land,

Though strange, and the untrodden snow that made

Wild of the tame, casting out all that was

Not wild and rustic and old; and we were glad.

Fair, too, was afternoon, and first to pass

Were we that league of snow, next the north wind.

There was nothing to return for, except need,

And yet we sang nor ever stopped for speed,

As we did often with the start behind.

Faster still strode we when we came in sight

Of the cold roofs where we must spend the night.

Happy we had not been there, nor could be,

Though we had tasted sleep and food and fellowship

Together long.

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