Page:The volunteer, and other poems, Asquith, 1916.djvu/20

 ARES, GOD OF WAR.

NDER the stars the armies lie asleep:

Between the lines a quiet river flows

Through brakes of honeysuckle and of rose

And fields where poppies droop in languor deep:

The night as with a mantle now enfolds

The muffled forms upon the pasture low;

The scent of thyme comes down across the wolds,

And on the roses of the dark hedgerow

The summer starlight falls in flakes of silver snow.

Here from the wooded haunt of nymph and fawn

The hidden guns peer forth across the hills,

Their wheels are on the trampled daffodils,

And so they wait the coming of the dawn.

In dappled shadows, where the fairy weaves

On grasses tall his web of sparkling lace,

The gunners lie, their heads upon the sheaves:

White falls the moon on many a sunburnt face,

That ere the day shall feel another God's embrace.

16