The unseen foe both adds and listens to
The self-same discord, eyed by the same stars.
Deep darkness hides the desolated land,
Save where a sudden flare sails up and bursts
In whitest glare above the wilderness,
And for one instant lights with lurid pallor
The tense, packed faces in the black redoubt.
I HAVE not wept when I have seen
My stricken comrades die;
I have not wept when we have made
The place where they should lie;
My heart seemed drowned in tears, but still
No tear came to my eye.
There is a time to weep, saith One,
A season to refrain;
How should it ope, this fount of tears,
While I sat in the train,
So that all blurred the landscape moved
Out with the window-pane?
But one short day since I had left
A land upheaved and rent,
Where Spring brings back no bourgeoning,
As Nature's force were spent,
Yet now I travelled in a train
Thro' the kindly land of Kent!
A kindly land, a pleasant land,
As welcome sight to me
As after purgatorial pains
The Plains of Heaven might be,
When the wondrous Goodness that is God
Draws a soul from jeopardy.