Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/365

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365
THE WOUNDED

OUT OF THE CONFLICT

THE ward is strangely hushed to-day;
The morning nurses sober-eyed
Regard the screened place where, they say,
At midnight, Number Twenty died.
So many weeks of weary hours
He lay and heard our busy tread,
As patient as the wistful flowers
That spent their fragrance near his bed—
So oft we saw in passing by,
His questing glance, his dreamful face,
We shall regard resentfully
The stranger that must fill his place . . .


What vision rapt him through the dim
Slow hours? Like wraiths upon the sight
All common changes seemed to him
Of dawn and day, of eve and night;
Each brought its sounds of whispering feet,
Its faces, glimmering, ghost by ghost—
Yet scarce he left his dream to greet
Those comers who would mourn him most.
For in his sight shone such a star
As, after tempests loud and rude,
To sea-worn eyes foretells some far
Relief—a port of quietude;
And, homing to that bourn, he heard
The call so many wanderers know
From meadows lulled by bee and bird
Where he was happy long ago—
Where simple things were ecstasy,
And life a game among the flowers,
And every hurt and malady
Was healed by gentler hands than ours . . .
Not jacinth wall and golden street
Perchance so rapt his dying gaze;
For him, Heaven's wonder was the sweet
Lost wonder of his childhood's days;

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