Page:Poems of the Great War - Cunliffe.djvu/201

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, where we stood together, we three men,

Before the war had swept us to the East

Three thousand miles away, I stand again

And hear the bells, and breathe, and go to feast.

We trod the same path, to the self-same place,

Yet here I stand, having beheld their graves,

Skyros whose shadows the great seas erase,

And Seddul Bahr that ever more blood craves.

So, since we communed here, our bones have been

Nearer, perhaps, than they again will be,

Earth and the world-wide battle lie between,

Death lies between, and friend-destroying sea.

Yet here, a year ago, we talked and stood

As I stand now, with pulses beating blood.

I saw her like a shadow on the sky

In the last light, a blur upon the sea,

Then the gale's darkness put the shadow by,

But from one grave that island talked to me;

And, in the midnight, in the breaking storm,

I saw its blackness and a blinking light.

And thought, "So death obscures your gentle form,

So memory strives to make the darkness bright;