Deep in your heart the restless seed was sown; The vagrant spirit fretted in your feet; We wondered could you tarry long, And brook for long the cramping street, Or would you one day sail for shores unknown, And shake from you the dust of towns, and spurn The crowded market-place--and not return? You found a sterner guide; You heard the guns. Then, to their distant fire, Your dreams were laid aside; And on that day, you cast your heart's desire Upon a burning pyre; You gave your service to the exalted need, Until at last from bondage freed, At liberty to serve as you loved best, You chose the noblest way. God did the rest. So when the spring of the world shall shrive our stain, After the winter of war, When the poor world awakes to peace once more, After such night of ravage and of rain, You shall not come again. You shall not come to taste the old spring weather, To gallop through the soft untrampled heather, To bathe and bake your body on the grass. We shall be there, alas! But not with you. When Spring shall wake the earth, And quicken the scarred fields to the new birth, Our grief shall grow. For what can Spring renew More fiercely for us than the need of you? That night I dreamt they sent for me and said That you were missing, 'missing, missing--dead': I cried when in the morning I awoke, And all the world seemed shrouded in a cloak; But when I saw the sun, And knew another day had just begun, I brushed the dream away, and quite forgot The nightmare's ugly blot. So was the dream forgot. The dream came true. Before the night I knew That you had flown away into the air For ever. Then I cheated my despair. I said That you were safe--or wounded--but not dead. Alas! I knew Which was the false and true. And after days of watching, days of lead, There came the certain news that you were dead. You had died fighting, fighting against odds, Such as in war the gods Æthereal dared when all the world was young; Such fighting as blind Homer never sung, Nor Hector nor Achilles never knew, High in the empty blue. High, high, above the clouds, against the setting sun, The fight was fought, and your great task was done. Of all your brave adventures this the last The bravest was and best; Meet ending to a long embattled past, This swift, triumphant, fatal quest, Crowned with the wreath that never perisheth, And diadem of honourable death; Swift Death aflame with offering supreme And mighty sacrifice, More than all mortal dream; A soaring death, and near to Heaven's gate; Beneath the very walls of Paradise. Surely with soul elate, You heard the destined bullet as you flew, And surely your prophetic spirit knew That you had well deserved that shining fate. Here is no waste, No burning Might-have-been, No bitter after-taste, None to censure, none to screen, Nothing awry, nor anything misspent; Only content, content beyond content, Which hath not any room for betterment.