I had met Love not many days before, And as in blissful mood I listening lay None ever had of joy so full a store. I thought that Spring must last for evermore, For I was young and loved, and it was May. * * * * * Now it is May again, and sweetly clear Perhaps once more aspires the Latin hymn From Magdalen tower, but not for me to hear. I toil far distant, for a darker year Shadows the century with menace grim. I walk in ways where pain and sorrow dwell, And ruin such as only War can bring, Where each lives through his individual hell, Fraught with remembered horror none can tell, And no more is there glory in the Spring. And I am worn with tears, for he I loved Lies cold beneath the stricken sod of France; Hope has forsaken me, by Death removed, And Love that seemed so strong and gay has proved A poor crushed thing, the toy of cruel Chance. Often I wonder, as I grieve in vain, If when the long, long future years creep slow, And War and tears alike have ceased to reign, I ever shall recapture, once again, The mood of that May morning, long ago. 1ST LONDON GENERAL HOSPITAL, _May 1916._ THE TWO TRAVELLERS Beware! You met two travellers in the town Who promised you that they would take you down The valley far away To some strange carnival this Summer’s day. Take care, Lest in the crowded street They hurry past you with forgetting feet, And leave you standing there. ROUNDEL (“DIED OF WOUNDS”) BECAUSE you died, I shall not rest again, But wander ever through the lone world wide, Seeking the shadow of a dream grown vain Because you died. I shall spend brief and idle hours beside The many lesser loves that still remain, But find in none my triumph and my pride; And Disillusion’s slow corroding stain Will creep upon each quest but newly tried, For every striving now shall nothing gain Because you died. FRANCE, _February 1918._ THE SISTERS BURIED AT LEMNOS (“FIDELIS AD EXTREMUM”) O GOLDEN Isle set in the deep blue Ocean, With purple shadows flitting o’er thy crest, I kneel to thee in reverent devotion Of some who on thy bosom lie at rest! Seldom they enter into song or story; Poets praise the soldier’s might and deeds of War, But few exalt the Sisters, and the glory Of women dead beneath a distant star. No armies threatened in that lonely station, They fought not fire or steel or ruthless foe, But heat and hunger, sickness and privation, And Winter’s deathly chill and blinding snow.