Four Songs to Texts by Ivor Gurney

My heart makes songs on lonely roads
to comfort me while you are away
and strives with lovely sounding words
its crowded tenderness to say
yet I am glad that love has come
to bind me fast, and try my worth
for love's a powerful lord and gives
his friends dominion over the earth.
I walk deserted ways and see
against the forward dark your face
Pale glimmering against the dark:
Your face I see with pride, and pain
So that, one turn, I did desire
Never to see that face again.

Pour out your light, O stars, and do not hold
  Your loveliest shining from earth's outworn shell --
Pure and cold your radiance -- pure and cold
  My dead friend's face as well.

Pour out your bounty, moon of radiant shining
  On all this shattered flesh, these quiet forms;
For these were slain, so strangely still reclining
  In the noblest cause was ever waged with arms.

He's gone and all our plans
 are useless indeed.
We'll walk no more on Cotswold
 where the sheep feed
 quietly and take no heed.
 
His body that was so quick
 is not as you
knew it, on Severn river
 under the blue
 driving our small boat through.
 
You would not know him now...
 but still he died
nobly, so cover him over
 with violets of pride
 Purple from Severn side.
 
Cover him, cover him soon!
 and with thickset
masses of memoried  flowers
 hide that red wet
 thing I must forget.

Out of my sorrow have I made these songs,
out of my sorrow;
Though somewhat of the makings eager pain
from joy did borrow.
 
Some day, I trust, God's purpose of pain for me
shall be complete,
And then to enter in the house of joy...
Prepare, my feet.