In the cherry pluckt at night, With the dew of summer swelling, There's a juice of pure delight, Cool, dark, sweet, divinely smelling. Merry, merry, Take a cherry, Mine are sounder, Mine are rounder, Mine are sweeter For the eater In the moonlight. And you'll be fairies quite. When I sound the fairy call, Gather here in silent meeting, Chin to knee on the orchard wall, Cooled with dew and cherries eating. Merry, merry, Take a cherry, Mine are sounder, Mine are rounder, Mine are sweeter For the eater When the dews fall. And you'll be fairies all. PART II.--Poems Written Before La Bassée--1915 THE SHADOW OF DEATH Here's an end to my art! I must die and I know it, With battle murder at my heart-- Sad death for a poet! Oh my songs never sung, And my plays to darkness blown! I am still so young, so young, And life was my own. Some bad fairy stole The baby I nursed: Was this my pretty little soul, This changeling accursed? To fight and kill is wrong-- To stay at home wronger: Oh soul, little play and song, I may father no longer! Here's an end to my art! I must die and I know it, With battle murder at my heart-- Sad death for a poet! THE MORNING BEFORE THE BATTLE To-day, the fight: my end is very soon, And sealed the warrant limiting my hours: I knew it walking yesterday at noon Down a deserted garden full of flowers. ... Carelessly sang, pinned roses on my breast, Reached for a cherry-bunch--and then, then, Death Blew through the garden from the North and East And blighted every beauty with chill breath. I looked, and ah, my wraith before me stood, His head all battered in by violent blows: The fruit between my lips to clotted blood Was transubstantiate, and the pale rose Smelt sickly, till it seemed through a swift tear-flood That dead men blossomed in the garden-close. LIMBO After a week spent under raining skies, In horror, mud and sleeplessness, a week Of bursting shells, of blood and hideous cries And the ever-watchful sniper: where the reek Of death offends the living ... but poor dead Can't sleep, must lie awake with the horrid sound That roars and whirs and rattles overhead All day, all night, and jars and tears the ground; When rats run, big as kittens: to and fro They dart, and scuffle with their horrid fare, And then one night relief comes, and we go Miles back into the sunny cornland where Babies like tickling, and where tall white horses Draw the plough leisurely in quiet courses. THE TRENCHES (_Heard in the Ranks_)