POEMS POEMS BY GEOFFREY DEARMER [Illustration: colophon] NEW YORK Robert M. McBride & Company 1918 Dedication TO CHRISTOPHER KILLED, SUVLA BAY, OCTOBER 6TH, 1915. _At Suvla when a sickening curse of sound_ _Came hurtling from the shrapnel-shaken skies,_ _Without a word you shuddered to the ground_ _And with a gesture hid your darkening eyes._ _You are not blind to-day--_ _But were we blind before you went away?_ _Forgive us then, if, faltering, we fail_ _To speak in terms articulate of you;_ _Now Death’s celestial journeymen unveil_ _Your naked soul--the soul we hardly knew._ _O beauty scarce unfurled,_ _Your blood shall help to purify the world._ _Awakened now, no longer we believe_ _Knight-errantry a myth of long ago._ _Let us not shame your happiness and grieve;_ _All close we feel you live and move, we know_ _Your life shall ever be_ _Close to our lives enshrined eternally._ CONTENTS I _The Dardanelles_ PAGE From “W” Beach 3 A Prayer 5 Fallen 6 The Turkish Trench Dog 7 The Sentinel 9 Mudros after the Evacuation 12 The Dead Turk 18 II _B.E.F._ Missing 17 Two Trench Poems 22 Gommecourt 24 A Vision 31 Revelation 33 Tell me, Stranger 34 Spring in the Trenches 36 On the Road 38 Keats, before Action 41 The Somme 42 Somme Flower Talk 46 To the Uttermost Farthing 48 In the Mess 53 A Trench Incident 54