Page:The Muse in Arms, Osborn (ed), 1917.djvu/222

180 Of battle hate and battle joy

By the old windy walls of Troy.

They felt that they were unreal then,

Visions and shadow-forms, not men.

But those the Bard did sing and say

(Some were their comrades, some were they)

Took shape and loomed and strengthened more

Greatly than they had guessed of yore.

And now the fight begins again,

The old war-joy, the old war-pain.

Sons of one school across the sea

We have no fear to fight—

And soon, oh soon, I do not doubt it,

With the body or without it,

We shall all come tumbling down

To our old wrinkled red-capped town.

Perhaps the road up Ilsley way,

The old ridge-track, will be my way.

High up among the sheep and sky,

Look down on Wantage, passing by,

And see the smoke from Swindon town;

And then full left at Liddington,

Where the four winds of heaven meet

The earth-blest traveller to greet.

And then my face is toward the south,

There is a singing on my mouth:

Away to rightward I descry

My Barbury ensconced in sky,