Into that dry and most desolate place With heavy gait they dragged the stretcher in And laid him on the bloody ground: the din Of Maxim fire ceased not. I raised his head,
And looked into his face, And saw that he was dead. Saw beneath matted curls the broken skin That let the bullet in;
And saw the limp, lithe limbs, the smiling mouth... ( Ah, may we smile at death As bravely....) the curv'd lips that no more drouth Should blacken, and no sweetly stirring breath
Mildly displace. So I covered the calm face And stripped the shirt from his firm breast, and there, A zinc identity disc, a bracelet of elephant hair
I found.... Ah, God, how deep it stings This unendurable pity of small things! But more than this I saw, That dead stranger welcoming, more than the raw
And brutal havoc of war. England I saw, the mother from whose side He came hither and died, she at whose hems he had play'd, In whose quiet womb his body and soul were made.
That pale, estranged flesh that we bowed over Had breathed the scent in summer of white clover; Dreamed her cool fading nights, her twilights long, And days as careless as a blackbird's song
Heard in the hush of eve, when midges’ wings Make a thin music, and the night-jar spins. ( For it is summer, I thought, in England now....) And once those forward gazing eyes had seen
Her lovely living green: that blackened brow Cool airs, from those blue hills moving, had fann'd — Breath of that holy land Whither my soul aspireth without despair:
In the broken brain had many a lovely word Awakened magical echoes of things heard, Telling of love and laughter and low voices, And tales in which the English heart rejoices
In vanishing visions of childhood and its glories: Old-fashioned nursery rhymes and fairy stories: Words that only an English tongue could tell. And the firing died away; and the night fell
On our battle. Only in the sullen sky A prairie fire, with huge fantastic flame Leapt, lighting dark clouds charged with thunder. And my heart was sick with shame
That there, in death, he should lie, Crying:‘ Oh, why am I alive, I wonder?’ In a dream I saw war riding the land: Stark rode she, with bowed eyes, against the glare
Of sack'd cities smouldering in the dark, A tired horse, lean, with outreaching head, And hid her face of dread.... Yet, in my passion would I look on her,
Crying, O hark, Thou pale one, whom now men say bearest the scythe Of God, that iron scythe forged by his thunder For reaping of nations overripened, fashioned
Upon the clanging anvil whose sparks, flying In a starry night, dying, fall hereunder.... But she, she heeded not my cry impassioned Nor turned her face of dread,
Urging the tired horse, with outreaching head, O thou, cried I, who choosest for thy going These bloomy meadows of youth, these flowery ways Whereby no influence strays
Ruder than a cold wind blowing, Or beating needles of rain, Why must thou ride again Ruthless among the pastures yet unripened,
Crushing their beauty in thine iron track Downtrodden, ravish'd in thy following flame, Parched and black? But she, she stayed not in her weary haste
Nor turned her face; but fled: And where she passed the lands lay waste.... And now I cannot tell whither she rideth: But tired, tired rides she.
Yet know I well why her dread face she hideth: She is pale and faint to death. Yea, her day faileth, Nor all her blood, nor all her frenzy burning, Nor all her hate availeth:
For she passeth out of sight Into that night From which none, none returneth To waste the meadows of youth,
Nor vex thine eyelids, Routhe, O sorrowful sister, soother of our sorrow. And a hope within me springs That fair will be the morrow,
And that charred plain, Those flowery meadows, shall rejoice at last In a sweet, clean Freshness, as when the green
Grass springeth, where the prairie fire hath passed.
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