Two Songs

On the idle hill of summer,
Sleepy with the flow of streams,
Far I hear the steady drummer
Drumming like a noise in dreams.

Far and near and low and louder,
On the roads of earth go by,
Dear to friends and food for powder,
Soldiers marching, all to die.

East and west on fields forgotten
Bleach the bones of comrades slain,
Lovely lads and dead and rotten;
None that go return again.

Far the calling bugles hollo,
High the screaming fife replies,
Gay the files of scarlet follow:
Woman bore me, I will rise.

With seed the sowers scatter
  The furrows as they go;
Poor lads, 'tis little matter
  How many sorts they sow,
  For only one will grow.

The charlock on the fallow
  Will take the traveller's eyes,
And gild the ploughland sallow
  With flowers before it dies.
  But twice 'twill not arise.

The stinging nettle only
  Will still be found to stand:
The numberless, the lonely,
  The thronger of the land,
  The leaf that hurts the hand.

It thrives, come sun, come showers,
  Blow east, blow west, it springs;
It peoples towns, and towers
  About the courts of Kings,
  And touch it and it stings.