For the Gods in their jealousy Murdered that wife and man, And we that were wise live free To recall our happiness then. IN MEMORIAM (Easter, 1915) THE flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood This Eastertide call into mind the men, Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should Have gathered them and will do never again. FIFTY FAGGOTS THERE they stand, on their ends, the fifty faggots That once were underwood of hazel and ash In Jenny Pinks's Copse. Now, by the hedge Close packed, they make a thicket fancy alone Can creep through with the mouse and wren. Next Spring A blackbird or a robin will nest there, Accustomed to them, thinking they will remain Whatever is for ever to a bird: This Spring it is too late; the swift has come. 'Twas a hot day for carrying them up: Better they will never warm me, though they must Light several Winters' fires. Before they are done The war will have ended, many other things Have ended, maybe, that I can no more Foresee or more control than robin and wren. WOMEN HE LIKED WOMEN he liked, did shovel-bearded Bob, Old Farmer Hayward of the Heath, but he Loved horses. He himself was like a cob, And leather-coloured. Also he loved a tree. For the life in them he loved most living things, But a tree chiefly. All along the lane He planted elms where now the stormcock sings That travellers hear from the slow-climbing train. Till then the track had never had a name For all its thicket and the nightingales That should have earned it. No one was to blame. To name a thing beloved man sometimes fails. Many years since, Bob Hayward died, and now None passes there because the mist and the rain Out of the elms have turned the lane to slough And gloom, the name alone survives, Bob's Lane. EARLY ONE MORNING EARLY one morning in May I set out, And nobody I knew was about. I'm bound away for ever, Away somewhere, away for ever. There was no wind to trouble the weathercocks. I had burnt my letters and darned my socks. No one knew I was going away, I thought myself I should come back some day. I heard the brook through the town gardens run. O sweet was the mud turned to dust by the sun. A gate banged in a fence and banged in my head. "A fine morning, sir." a shepherd said. I could not return from my liberty, To my youth and my love and my misery. The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet, The only sweet thing that is not also fleet. I'm bound away for ever, Away somewhere, away for ever. THE CHERRY TREES THE cherry trees bend over and are shedding On the old road where all that passed are dead, Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding This early May morn when there is none to wed. IT RAINS IT rains, and nothing stirs within the fence Anywhere through the orchard's untrodden, dense Forest of parsley. The great diamonds Of rain on the grassblades there is none to break, Or the fallen petals further down to shake.