Page:Some soldier poets.djvu/103

Rh Dis and Styx!

When I stamp my hoof

The frozen-cloud-specks jam into the cleft

So that I reel upon two slippery points. ..

Fool, to stand here cursing

When I might be running!

I find this almost convincing, more so than Ledwidge's Wife of Llew; yet it too savours of pedantry when compared with Sorley's Runners.

AT NIGHTS

nights I sit here,

Shading my eyes, shutting them if you glance up,

Pretending to doze,

And watching you,

Thinking.

I think of when I first saw the beauty of things—

God knows I was poor enough and sad enough

And humiliated enough—

But not all the slights and the poorness and the worry

Could hide away the green of the poplar leaves,

The ripple and light of the little stream,

The pattern of the ducks' feathers,

The dawns I saw in the winter

When I went shooting,

The summer walks and the winter walks,

The hot days with the cows coming down to the water,

The flowers,

Buttercups and meadow-sweet and hog's parsley,

And the larks singing in the morning, and the thrushes

Trilling at dusk when I went out into the fields

Muttering poetry.

I looked at the world as God did

When first He made it.

I saw that it was good.

And now at nights,

Now that everything has gone right somehow,

And I have friends and books

And no more bitterness, Rh