“I went just where you said, but found No summer-house was there: Beyond the slope ’tis all bare ground; Nothing stands anywhere. “A man asked what my brains were worth; The house, he said, grew rotten, And was pulled down before my birth, And is almost forgotten!” My right mind woke, and I stood dumb; Forty years’ frost and flower Had fleeted since I’d used to come To meet her in that bower. WHILE DRAWING IN A CHURCH-YARD “IT is sad that so many of worth, Still in the flesh,” soughed the yew, “Misjudge their lot whom kindly earth Secludes from view. “They ride their diurnal round Each day-span’s sum of hours In peerless ease, without jolt or bound Or ache like ours. “If the living could but hear What is heard by my roots as they creep Round the restful flock, and the things said there, No one would weep.” “‘Now set among the wise,’ They say: ‘Enlarged in scope, That no God trumpet us to rise We truly hope.’” I listened to his strange tale In the mood that stillness brings, And I grew to accept as the day wore pale That show of things. “FOR LIFE I HAD NEVER CARED GREATLY” FOR Life I had never cared greatly, As worth a man’s while; Peradventures unsought, Peradventures that finished in nought, Had kept me from youth and through manhood till lately Unwon by its style. In earliest years—why I know not— I viewed it askance; Conditions of doubt, Conditions that leaked slowly out, May haply have bent me to stand and to show not Much zest for its dance. With symphonies soft and sweet colour It courted me then, Till evasions seemed wrong, Till evasions gave in to its song, And I warmed, until living aloofly loomed duller Than life among men. Anew I found nought to set eyes on, When, lifting its hand, It uncloaked a star, Uncloaked it from fog-damps afar, And showed its beams burning from pole to horizon As bright as a brand. And so, the rough highway forgetting, I pace hill and dale Regarding the sky, Regarding the vision on high, And thus re-illumed have no humour for letting My pilgrimage fail. POEMS OF WAR AND PATRIOTISM “MEN WHO MARCH AWAY” (SONG OF THE SOLDIERS) WHAT of the faith and fire within us Men who march away Ere the barn-cocks say Night is growing gray, Leaving all that here can win us; What of the faith and fire within us Men who march away? Is it a purblind prank, O think you, Friend with the musing eye, Who watch us stepping by With doubt and dolorous sigh? Can much pondering so hoodwink you! Is it a purblind prank, O think you, Friend with the musing eye?