The same year after year-- But with the swift alone. With other things I but fear That they will be over and done Suddenly And I only see Them to know them gone. GONE, GONE AGAIN GONE, gone again, May, June, July, And August gone, Again gone by, Not memorable Save that I saw them go, As past the empty quays The rivers flow. And now again, In the harvest rain, The Blenheim oranges Fall grubby from the trees, As when I was young-- And when the lost one was here-- And when the war began To turn young men to dung. Look at the old house, Outmoded, dignified, Dark and untenanted, With grass growing instead Of the footsteps of life, The friendliness, the strife; In its beds have lain Youth, love, age and pain: I am something like that; Only I am not dead, Still breathing and interested In the house that is not dark:-- I am something like that: Not one pane to reflect the sun, For the schoolboys to throw at-- They have broken every one. THE SUN USED TO SHINE THE sun used to shine while we two walked Slowly together, paused and started Again, and sometimes mused, sometimes talked As either pleased, and cheerfully parted Each night. We never disagreed Which gate to rest on. The to be And the late past we gave small heed. We turned from men or poetry To rumours of the war remote Only till both stood disinclined For aught but the yellow flavorous coat Of an apple wasps had undermined; Or a sentry of dark betonies, The stateliest of small flowers on earth, At the forest verge; or crocuses Pale purple as if they had their birth In sunless Hades fields. The war Came back to mind with the moonrise Which soldiers in the east afar Beheld then. Nevertheless, our eyes Could as well imagine the Crusades Or Caesar's battles. Everything To faintness like those rumours fades-- Like the brook's water glittering Under the moonlight--like those walks Now--like us two that took them, and The fallen apples, all the talks And silences--like memory's sand When the tide covers it late or soon, And other men through other flowers In those fields under the same moon Go talking and have easy hours. OCTOBER THE green elm with the one great bough of gold Lets leaves into the grass slip, one by one,-- The short hill grass, the mushrooms small milk-white, Harebell and scabious and tormentil, That blackberry and gorse, in dew and sun, Bow down to; and the wind travels too light To shake the fallen birch leaves from the fern; The gossamers wander at their own will. At heavier steps than birds' the squirrels scold.