Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/395

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395
THE FALLEN

Let us bring pungent wreaths of balsam, and tender
Tendrils of wild-flowers, lovelier for thy daring,
And deck a sylvan shrine, where the maple parts
The moonlight, with lilac bloom, and the splendour
Of suns unwearied; all unwithered wearing
Thy valour stainless in our heart of hearts.


TO SOME WHO HAVE FALLEN

SPRING is God's season; may you see His Spring
Somewhere, the larch and ash buds burgeoning,
Round catkin tassels and the blossomed spine
Of blackthorn, and the golden celandine,
And little rainwashed violet leaves unfurled
To deck young April in another world.


We cannot know how much a dead man hears,
What awful music of the distant spheres,
But you may linger still, you may not be
Too far from us to share the ecstasy
Of all the larks that nest upon our hills,
Or miss the flowering of the daffodils.


Since if, as some folks say, ourselves do make
Our Heaven, yours will hold, for old times' sake,
The farms and orchards that you left behind,
Steep lichened roofs, and rutted lanes that wind
Through green lush meadows up from Wealden towns
To the bare beauty of our Sussex Downs.


IN MEMORIAM
Private D. Sutherland, killed in Action in the German Trench, May 16, 1916, and Others who Died.

SO you were David's father,
And he was your only son,
And the new-cut peats are rotting
And the work is left undone,

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