To A Private Soldier

The air is still, the light winds blow
Too quietly to wake you now.
Dreamer, you dream too well to know
'Whose hand set death upon your brow,
The shrinking flesh the bullets tore
Will never pulse with fear again;

Sleep on, remembering no more
Your sudden agony of pain.

Oh, poor brave smiling face made naught,
Turned back to dust from whence you came,
You have forgot the men you fought,
The wounds that burnt you like a flame;

With stiff hand crumbling a clod,
And blind eyes staring at the sky,
The awful evidence of God
Against the men who made you die.

You have forgotten, sleeping well,
But what of them? shall they forget
Your body broken with the shell,
Your brow whereon their seal is set?
Does earth for them hold any place
Where they shall never see the flies
Clustered about your empty face
And on your blind, accusing eyes?

Good-night, good sleep to you. But they
Will never know good-night again,
Whose eyes are seeing night and day,
The humble men who died in vain.
Their ears are filled with bitter cries,
Their nostrils with the powder smell,
And shall see your mournful eyes
Across the reeking fires of hell.

In Memoriam - R. M. Stalker

As I go down the highway,
And through the village street,
I hear the pipers playing
And the tramp of marching feet.
The men I worked and fought with
Swing by me four on four.
And at the end you follow
Whom I shall see no more.

Oh, Stalk, where are you lying ?
Somewhere and far away,
Enemy hands have buried
Your quiet contemptuous clay.
There was no greeting given,
No tear of friend for friend,
From us when you flew over
Exultant to the end.

I couldn't see the paper,
I couldn't think that you
Would never walk the highway
The way you used to do.
I turn at every footfall,
Half-hoping, half -afraid
To see you coming, later
Than usual for parade.

The old Lairg clique is broken,
I drove there yesterday.
And the car was full of ghosts that sat
Beside me all the way.
Ghosts of old songs and laughter,
Ghosts of the jolly three,
That went the road together
And go no more with me.

Oh, Stalk, but I am lonely.
For the old days we knew.
And the bed on the floor at Lesdos
We slept in, I and you.
The joyful nights in billets
We laughed and drank and swore —
But the candle's burned out now, Stalk,
In the mess at Henancourt.

The candle's burned out now, old man.
And the dawn's come grey and cold.
And I sit by the fire here
Alone and sad and old.
Though all the rest come back again.
You lie in a foreign land,
And the strongest link of all the chain
Is broken in my hand.