Page:Soldier poets, songs of the fighting men, 1916.djvu/87

Rh To dream,—sweet fancies which the young enjoy,

The last thrush whistles in a distant copse,

As, only by the glowing of a pipe,

A smothered laugh, a restless infant's cry,

Is the blue silence of the Heavens broken

To show the stars humanity still lives.

The Village

1915

HE shrieking of a thousand maddened furies

Riding the air, a violent thunder-clap,

Sharp vivid stabs of flame; then falling bricks

And silence: deep, deep silence of the dead.

No other creature but a scurrying rat

Is seen, even the sparrows that last year

In cheeky self-assurance chirped about

Have gone their way and left the desolate place.

In May the martins came again, to build

Their tiny homes on last year's site, but found

The sheltering eaves where they had taken refuge

Strewn on the ground.

Those scarred and tumbling walls

Once were the church, yet might have been an inn 83