Casualties

If the fair promise of your coming ’s true,
And you should live through years of peace,
O son of mine, forget not these,
The sons of man, who died for you.

Ghostly through the drifting mist the lingering snow-wreaths glimmer,
And ghostly comes the lych-owl’s hunting-cry;
And ghostly, with wet fleeces in the watery moon a-shimmer
One by one the gray sheep slowly pass me by.

One by one, through bent and heather, disappearing in the hollow,
Ghostly shadows down the grassy track they steal;
And I dread to see them passing, lest a ghost behind them follow —
A ghost from Flanders follow, dog at heel.

Roses he loved, and their fantastic names —
Gloire de Dijon, Léonie Lamesch,
Château de Clos-Vougeot — like living flames
They kindled in his memory afresh,
As, lying in the mud of France, he turned
His eyes to the gray sky, light after light;
And last within his dying vision burned
Château de Clos-Vougeot’s deep crimson night.

‘I’m mighty fond of blackberry jam,’ he said:
‘ It tastes of summer. When I come again,
You’ll give me some for tea, and soda-bread?’

Black clusters throng each bramble-spray burned red,
And, over-ripe, are rotting in the rain;
But not for him is any table spread
Who comes not home again.

Heavy the scent of elder in the air,
As on the night he went; the starry bloom
He’d brushed in passing dusted face and hair;
And the hot fragrance filled the little room.

Heavy the scent of elder; in the night,
Where I lie lone abed, with stifling breath,
And eyes that dread to see the morning light,
The heavy fume of elder smells of death.

Softly out of the dove-gray sky
Drift the snowflakes, fine and dry,
Till braeside and bottom are all heaped high.

Remembering how he would love to go
Over the crisp and the creaking snow,
I wonder that now he can lie below,

If softly out of the Flanders sky
Drift the snowflakes fine and dry,
Till crater and shell-hole are all heaped high

He bawled and shouted, like a silly lad,
Under the very shadow of Bagdad:
‘Take me over the sea
Where the enemy can’t get at me!’
He bawled and shouted to the starry sky:
‘Oh, my! I don’t want to die:
I want to go home.’

A slinking sniper shot him through the head;
He spun round, homewards, with a silly stare;
Then on the starry sand he tumbled dead;
And lurking jackals snuffed the desert air.

He sang in Little Pidgeley choir,
With shining eyes and soul afire:
‘Jerusalem, my happy home,
When shall I come to thee?
When shall my sorrows have an end?
Thy joys, when shall I see?’
And, even in Jerusalem,
He died of dysentery.

He cleaned out middens for his daily bread:
War took him over-seas; and in a bed
Of lilies of the valley dropped him, dead.

To a proud peacock, strutting, tail in air,
He clipped the yew each thirteenth of July;
No feather ruffled, sleek and debonair,
Clean-edged, it cut the yellow evening sky.

But he returns no more, who went across
The narrow seas one thirteenth of July;
And drearily all day the branches toss,
Ragged and dark, against the rainy sky.

They fought and quarreled: fifty times a day
She cursed her marriage, and she wished him dead;
And then the war came — and he went away.
But sore she missed him; for no news she heard
From that day on, till, in some heathen land,
A bayonet stuck him; and they sent her word.

Holding the yellow envelope in her hand,
She fell down in a swoon, and never stirred —
Breathing her last; the telegram unread.

It pricked like needles slashed into his face,
The ceaseless, rustling smother of dry snow
That stormed the ridge on that hell-raking blast.

And then he knew the end had come at last,
And stumbled blindly, muttering, ‘Cheery-oh!’
Into eternity, and left no trace.

She sleeps in bronze, the Helen of his dreams,
Within the quiet of my little room,
Touched by the winter firelight’s flickering gleams
To tenderer beauty in the rosy gloom.

She sleeps in bronze; and he who fashioned her,
Shaping the wet clay with such eager joy,
Slumbers as soundly where the cold winds stir
The withered tussocks on the plains of Troy.