Page:The Muse in Arms, Osborn (ed), 1917.djvu/98

56 Seems to be blowing. Almost I have heard

In the shuddering drift the lost dead's last word:

Go home, go home, go to my house,

Knock at the door, knock hard, arouse

My wife and the children—that you must do—

What d' you say?—Tell the children too—

Knock at the door, knock hard, and arouse

''The living. Say: the dead won't come back to this house''.

Oh but it's cold—I soak in the rain—

Shrapnel found me—I shan't go home again.

No, not home again—The mourning voices trail

Away into rain, into darkness the pale

Soughing of the night drifts on in between.

The Voices were as if the dead had never been.

O melancholy heavens, O melancholy fields!

The glad, full darkness grows complete and shields

Me from your appeal.

With a terrible delight

I hear far guns low like oxen, at the night.

Flames disrupt the sky. The work is begun.

"Action!" My guns crash, flame, rock, and stun

Again and again. Soon the soughing night

Is loud with their clamour and leaps with their light.

The imperative chorus rises sonorous and fell:

My heart glows lighted as by fires of hell,