There, now! he goes-- Old Bones; I've wearied him. Ay, and the light doth dim, And asleep's the rose, And tired Innocence In dreams is hence.... Come, Love, my lad, Nodding that drowsy head, 'T is time thy prayers were said. _Walter de la Mare_ THE ROAD TO DIEPPE [Concerning the experiences of a journey on foot through the night of August 4, 1914 (the night after the formal declaration of war between England and Germany), from a town near Amiens, in France, to Dieppe, a distance of somewhat more than forty miles.] Before I knew, the Dawn was on the road, Close at my side, so silently he came Nor gave a sign of salutation, save To touch with light my sleeve and make the way Appear as if a shining countenance Had looked on it. Strange was this radiant Youth, As I, to these fair, fertile parts of France, Where Caesar with his legions once had passed, And where the Kaiser's Uhlans yet would pass Or e'er another moon should cope with clouds For mastery of these same fields.--To-night (And but a month has gone since I walked there) Well might the Kaiser write, as Caesar wrote, In his new Commentaries on a Gallic war, "_Fortissimi Belgae_."--A moon ago! Who would have then divined that dead would lie Like swaths of grain beneath the harvest moon Upon these lands the ancient Belgae held, From Normandy beyond renowned Liège!-- But it was out of that dread August night From which all Europe woke to war, that we, This beautiful Dawn-Youth, and I, had come, He from afar. Beyond grim Petrograd He'd waked the moujik from his peaceful dreams, Bid the muezzin call to morning prayer Where minarets rise o'er the Golden Horn, And driven shadows from the Prussian march To lie beneath the lindens of the _stadt_. Softly he'd stirred the bells to ring at Rheims, He'd knocked at high Montmartre, hardly asleep; Heard the sweet carillon of doomed Louvain, Boylike, had tarried for a moment's play Amid the traceries of Amiens, And then was hast'ning on the road to Dieppe, When he o'ertook me drowsy from the hours Through which I'd walked, with no companions else Than ghostly kilometer posts that stood As sentinels' of space along the way.-- Often, in doubt, I'd paused to question one, With nervous hands, as they who read Moon-type; And more than once I'd caught a moment's sleep Beside the highway, in the dripping grass, While one of these white sentinels stood guard, Knowing me for a friend, who loves the road, And best of all by night, when wheels do sleep And stars alone do walk abroad.--But once Three watchful shadows, deeper than the dark, Laid hands on me and searched me for the marks Of traitor or of spy, only to find Over my heart the badge of loyalty.-- With wish for _bon voyage_ they gave me o'er To the white guards who led me on again.