Battle Songs

We who are left, how shall we look again
Happily on the sun or feel the rain
Without remembering how they who went
Ungrudgingly and spent
Their lives for us loved, too, the sun and rain?

A bird among the rain-wet lilac sings --
But we, how shall we turn to little things
And listen to the birds and winds and streams
Made holy by their dreams,
Nor feel the heart-break in the heart of things?

I could not understand the sudden quiet
The sudden darkness in the crash of fight, 
The din and glare of day quenched in a twinkling 
        In utter starless night. 

I lay an age and idly gazed at nothing, 
Half-puzzled that I could not lift my head ; 
And then I knew somehow that I was lying 
        Among the other dead.

Out of the sparkling sea 
I drew my tingling body clear, and lay 
On a low ledge the livelong summer day, 
Basking, and watching lazily 
White sails in Falmouth Bay. 

My body seemed to burn
Salt in the sun that drenched it through and through 
Till every particle glowed clean and new 
And slowly seemed to turn 
To lucent amber in a world of blue. . . . 

I felt a sudden wrench 
A trickle of warm blood 
And found that I was sprawling in the mud 
Among the dead men in the trench.

Broken, bewildered by the long retreat 
Across the stifling leagues of southern plain, 
Across the scorching leagues of trampled grain, 
Half-stunned, half-blinded, by the trudge of feet
And dusty smother of the August heat, 
He dreamt of flowers in an English lane, 
Of hedgerow flowers glistening after rain --
All-heal and willow-herb and meadow-sweet.
All-heal and willow-herb and meadow-sweet --
The innocent names kept up a cool refrain --
All-heal and willow-herb and meadow-sweet,
Chiming and tinkling in his aching brain, 
Until he babbled like a child again --
"All-heal and willow-herb and meadow-sweet." 

All day beneath the hurtling shells 
Before my burning eyes 
Hover the dainty demoiselles
The peacock dragon-flies. 

Unceasingly they dart and glance 
Above the stagnant stream
And I am fighting here in France 
As in a senseless dream. 

A dream of shattering black shells 
That hurtle overhead, 
And dainty dancing demoiselles 
Above the dreamless dead. 

A lull in the racket and brattle, 
And a lark soars into the light 
And its song seems the voice of the light 
Quelling the voices of night 
And the shattering fury of battle. 

But again the fury of battle 
Breaks out, and he drops from the height 
Dead as a stone from the height 
Drops dead, and the voice of the light 
Is drowned in the shattering brattle.