Here, where we stood together, we three men, Before the war had swept us to the East Three thousand miles away, I stand again And hear the bells, and breathe, and go to feast. We trod the same path, to the self-same place, Yet here I stand, having beheld their graves, Skyros whose shadows the great seas erase, And Seddul Bahr that ever more blood craves. So, since we communed here, our bones have been Nearer, perhaps, than they again will be, Earth and the world-wide battle lie between, Death lies between, and friend-destroying sea. Yet here, a year ago, we talked and stood As I stand now, with pulses beating blood. I saw her like a shadow on the sky In the last light, a blur upon the sea, Then the gale's darkness put the shadow by, But from one grave that island talked to me; And, in the midnight, in the breaking storm, I saw its blackness and a blinking light, And thought, "So death obscures your gentle form, So memory strives to make the darkness bright; And, in that heap of rocks, your body lies, Part of the island till the planet ends, My gentle comrade, beautiful and wise, Part of this crag this bitter surge offends, While I, who pass, a little obscure thing, War with this force, and breathe, and am its king." Not that the stars are all gone mad in heaven Plucking the unseen reins upon men's souls, Not that the law that bound the planets seven Is discord now; man probes for new controls. He bends no longer to the circling stars, New moon and full moon and the living sun, Love-making Venus, Jove and bloody Mars Pass from their thrones, their rule of him is done. And paler gods, made liker men, are past, Like their sick eras to their funeral urns, They cannot stand the fire blown by the blast In which man's soul that measures heaven burns. Man in his cage of many millioned pain Burns all to ash to prove if God remain. There is no God, as I was taught in youth, Though each, according to his stature, builds Some covered shrine for what he thinks the truth, Which day by day his reddest heart-blood gilds. There is no God; but death, the clasping sea, In which we move like fish, deep over deep Made of men's souls that bodies have set free, Floods to a Justice though it seems asleep. There is no God, but still, behind the veil, The hurt thing works, out of its agony. Still, like a touching of a brimming Grail, Return the pennies given to passers by. There is no God, but we, who breathe the air, Are God ourselves and touch God everywhere.