While the phasm of him who fared starts up, And of her who was waiting him sobs from near, As they haunt there and drink the wormwood cup They filled for themselves when their sky was clear. Yes, I see those roads—now rutted and bare, While over the gate is no sun-glazed sea; And though life laughed when I halted there, It is where I never again would be. “AND THERE WAS A GREAT CALM” (ON THE SIGNING OF THE ARMISTICE, Nov. 11, 1918) I THERE had been years of Passion—scorching, cold, And much Despair, and Anger heaving high, Care whitely watching, Sorrows manifold, Among the young, among the weak and old, And the pensive Spirit of Pity whispered, “Why?” II Men had not paused to answer. Foes distraught Pierced the thinned peoples in a brute-like blindness, Philosophies that sages long had taught, And Selflessness, were as an unknown thought, And “Hell!” and “Shell!” were yapped at Lovingkindness. III The feeble folk at home had grown full-used To “dug-outs,” “snipers,” “Huns,” from the war-adept In the mornings heard, and at evetides perused; To day—dreamt men in millions, when they mused— To nightmare-men in millions when they slept. IV Waking to wish existence timeless, null, Sirius they watched above where armies fell; He seemed to check his flapping when, in the lull Of night a boom came thencewise, like the dull Plunge of a stone dropped into some deep well. V So, when old hopes that earth was bettering slowly Were dead and damned, there sounded “War is done!” One morrow. Said the bereft, and meek, and lowly, “Will men some day be given to grace? yea, wholly, And in good sooth, as our dreams used to run?” VI Breathless they paused. Out there men raised their glance To where had stood those poplars lank and lopped, As they had raised it through the four years’ dance Of Death in the now familiar flats of France; And murmured, “Strange, this! How? All firing stopped?” VII Aye; all was hushed. The about-to-fire fired not, The aimed-at moved away in trance-lipped song. One checkless regiment slung a clinching shot And turned. The Spirit of Irony smirked out, “What? Spoil peradventures woven of Rage and Wrong?” VIII Thenceforth no flying fires inflamed the gray, No hurtlings shook the dewdrop from the thorn, No moan perplexed the mute bird on the spray; Worn horses mused: “We are not whipped to-day”; No weft-winged engines blurred the moon’s thin horn. IX