Page:Poems of the Great War - Cunliffe.djvu/54

 28 H. W. BLISS

��"ANY FRIEND TO ANY FRIEND"

Ev'n as I thought of you your soul had sped,

Friend of old, happy, far-off boyhood days,

And, as across the sea I turned my gaze,

The soil of France with your brave blood was red !

Blame not the shears that slit the thin yarn thread.

Though life be lost, immortal is the praise !

Would I were with you crowned with victory's

bays, O Happy Warrior 'midst our English dead !

Yea ! God of Battles, what a time to die ! Thy Courts are echoing to the tuck of drum. The wide days flame with comet souls that fly Triumphant, at a bound, from Earth to Heaven, The nights ablaze, with their white passage riven, As, trailing clouds of glory, swift they come.

— H. W. Bliss.

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