IN TRENCHES, _March 1917_. SPRING. ROUEN, MAY 1917 I AM dumb, I am dumb! And here’s a Norman orchard and here’s Spring Goading the sullen words that will not come. Romance, beating his distant magical drum, Calls to a soldier bearing alien arms, “Throw off your yoke and hear my darlings sing, Blackbirds” (by red-roofed farms) “More drunk than any poet with May’s delight, Green alive to the eye, and pink and white.” Joy’s there, but not for me; And song, but shall I sing That live as in a dream of some bad night, Whose memories are of such ecstasy And height of passionate joy, that pain alone Is born of beauty in cloud and flower and tree; Yes, and the great Cathedral’s towering stone. To me these are but shadows Of orchards and old meadows Trodden before the dawn, Trodden after the dusk.... All loveliness of France is as a husk, The inner living spirit of beauty gone, To that familiar beauty now withdrawn From exiles hungering ever for the sight Of her day-face; England’s; Or in some orchard space Breathless to drink peace from her calm night. How shall I sing, since she sings not to me Songs any more? High rule she holds for ever on the sea That’s hers, but dreams too might guard the shore Of France, that’s French and set apart for ever. A Spirit of Love our link of song does sever. Had it been hate (The weakest of all sworn enemies of Love) We should have broken through or passed above Its foolish barriers; Here we must bow as to established Fate, And reverently; for, comrades and high peers, Sisters in blood, Our mothers brook no rival in their state Of motherhood.