And the blackbird builds below the catkin shaking, And the sweet white violets are beauty in the blood, And daffodils are there, and the blackthorn blossom breaking Is a wild white beauty in bud. XXIV. Here the legion halted, here the ranks were broken, And the men fell out to gather wood; And the green wood smoked, and bitter words were spoken, And the trumpets called to food. And the sentry on the rampart saw the distance dying In the smoke of distance blue and far, And heard the curlew calling and the owl replying As the night came cold with one star; And thought of home beyond, over moorland, over marshes, Over hills, over the sea, across the plains, across the pass, By a bright sea trodden by the ships of Tarshis, The farm, with cicadæ in the grass. And thought, as I: "Perhaps, I may be done with living To-morrow, when we fight. I shall see those souls no more. O beloved souls, be beloved in forgiving The deeds and the words that make me sore." XXV. We danced away care till the fiddler's eyes blinked, And at supper, at midnight, our wine glasses chinked; Then we danced till the roses that hung round the wall Were broken red petals that did rise and did fall To the ever-turning couples of the bright eyed and gay Singing in the midnight to dance care away. Then the dancing died out and the carriages came, And the beauties took their cloaks and the men did the same, And the wheels crunched the gravel and the lights were turned down, And the tired beauties dozed through the cold drive to town. Nan was the belle, and she married her beau, Who drank, and then beat her, and she died long ago; And Mary, her sister, is married, and gone To a tea-planter's lodge, in the plains, in Ceylon. And Dorothy's sons have been killed out in France, And May lost her man in the August advance, And Em the man jilted, and she lives all alone In the house of this dance which seems burnt in my bone. Margaret and Susan and Marian and Phyllis, With red lips laughing and the beauty of lilies, And the grace of wild-swans and a wonder of bright hair, Dancing among roses with petals in the air All, all are gone, and Hetty's little maid Is so like her mother that it makes me afraid. And Rosalind's son, whom I passed in the street, Clinked on the pavement with the spurs on his feet. XXVI.