I shall crouch by the door till the bolt is down, And then go in to my dead. Where my husband fell I will put a stone, And mother a child instead of my own, And stand and laugh on my bare hearth-stone When the King rides by, she said. BATTLE SLEEP [1915] Somewhere, O sun, some corner there must be Thou visitest, where down the strand Quietly, still, the waves go out to sea From the green fringes of a pastoral land. Deep in the orchard-bloom the roof-trees stand, The brown sheep graze along the bay. And through the apple-boughs above the sand The bees’ hum sounds no fainter than the spray. There through uncounted hours declines the day To the low arch of twilight’s close, And, just as night about the moon grows gray, One sail leans westward to the fading rose. Giver of dreams, O thou with scatheless wing Forever moving through the fiery hail, To flame-seared lids the cooling vision bring And let some soul go seaward with that sail. ELEGY [1918] Ah, how I pity the young dead who gave All that they were, and might become, that we With tired eyes should watch this perfect sea Reweave its patterning of silver wave Round scented cliffs of arbutus and bay. No more shall any rose along the way, The myrtled way that wanders to the shore, Nor jonquil-twinkling meadow any more, Nor the warm lavender that takes the spray, Smell only of the sea-salt and the sun, But, through recurring seasons, every one Shall speak to us with lips the darkness closes, Shall look at us with eyes that missed the roses, Clutch us with hands whose work was just begun, Laid idle now beneath the earth we tread— And always we shall walk with the young dead— Ah, how I pity the young dead, whose eyes Strain through the sod to see these perfect skies, Who feel the new wheat springing in their stead, And the lark singing for them overhead! WITH THE TIDE [6th January 1919]