For an instant one of those moments of distorted sensation assailed him, of familiarity with what occurs; the silence was acute with soundless sounds; in the shadow about him crowded unseen presences; the pounding of his heart was louder than a drum ... and suddenly he knew that he had never been surprised, always the things that had come to him he had foreseen. Suddenly he knew that he had always known that this would happen to him; war and death. For an instant he closed his eyes against memory, against war, presentiment. Like terrible and bitter waters, despair engulfed him; he was conscious of a fumbling, still-born gesture after the youth that he had lost, the beauty forgotten, the poems he would not write. _He had meant to be a poet._ Always, as a child, a youth, he had meant to be a poet, and write phrases like the “vision splendid,” and sleep in Westminster with the mighty dead. A strangling agony was in his throat.... He felt betrayed. War had betrayed him. Fate had. Now he would never be a poet and sleep in Westminster. He was only a soldier, a warrior ... an unknown warrior. The terrible and bitter waters, the strangling agony at length subsided. He felt spent, exhausted, devoid of emotion. And after a moment he rose from his knees; he was remembering why he had come back to England on this strange leave; he was remembering he must hurry if he were to stand again among the mighty dead. The look of childhood, the look of hidden, secret happiness returned to his face as he turned away from the high altar and traversed the transept. When at last he had come to the Poets’ Corner, he paused, he relaxed, he drew a deep breath, as one who has indeed come home. Above him in the stained glass windows myriad colors gleamed. It was lighter there than any place in the Abbey, than any place in England, the young soldier thought ... any place in the world. England’s poets! He found himself again among them. It was a tryst he kept! As he stood there, the twilight, and the storm, and war, all the weary weight he carried, vanished from about him. Like a rush of purifying waters, poetry and beauty swept his soul. It was for this he had come home! Hot, unexpected tears in his eyes startled the young soldier. Poetry! He had not until today really thought of poetry for three hideous years of war. Poetry! The very word was the loveliest in the language. Unexpectedly, he remembered his bookshelves, his volumes of poems, certain pages--words themselves were before his eyes. “Whither is fled the visionary gleam?” “Where is it now, the glory and the dream?” Like a deep-toned organ, the music of Wordsworth’s Ode was about him. “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.”... The words suggested phraseless things; they lifted him, he soared upon their beauty. Suddenly illusion swept him....