Page:Poems of the Great War - Cunliffe.djvu/144

 118 JULIAN GRENFELL

��INTO BATTLE

The naked earth is warm with Spring, And with green grass and bursting trees

Leans to the sun's gaze glorying, And quivers in the sunny breeze ;

And Life is Color and Warmth and Light,

And a striving evermore for these ; And he is dead who will not fight ;

And who dies fighting has increase.

The fighting man shall from the sun

Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth ; Speed with the light-foot winds to run.

And with the trees to newer birth ; And find, when fighting shall be done.

Great rest, and fullness after dearth.

All the bright company of Heaven Hold him in their high comradeship.

The Dog-Star and the Sisters Seven, Orion's Belt and sworded hip.

The woodland trees that stand together, They stand to him each one a friend ;

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