Page:Poems of the Great War - Cunliffe.djvu/284

 258 FRANK TAYLOR

Hell's pale marauders shudderingly recoil Frustrate. O glad condition and sublime

Of our undying dead, to fight and foil The ancient foe, continually to climb

Through God's high order of His Saints, to meet Some soul whose star-like name lit all their course,

And commune with him, to discern and greet

Old kindred, love, and friendship, hound and horse ;

To see God face to face, and still to see

And labor for the loves that grope on earth,

To wait serenely till all souls shall be One in God's aristocracy of worth, —

O glad condition and sublime ! whereto

That southern tomb thy hands may never tend

Was but the gateway thy loved boy passed through, Thy wedded love passed through, that he might wend

Homeward to thee ; thou can'st not see the blaze Of his great blade nor hear his trumpets blare,

Yet thick as brown leaves round about thy ways,

There go the dead that died for England, there.

— Frank Taylor.

(This poem was written about 1902, and was published in the Spectator of June 12, 1915, having been found among the author's papers by his executor, by whose consent it is here reprinted.)

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