Shall climb the tree the fruit grew on
To see which road it is you've gone.
How shall I plan to overtake
Those wings of yours? And I must make
In time to welcome you, a proud
White castle of some mountain cloud—
But no more now. . . . The old clock clangs
Somewhere within. A veery hangs
Small golden wreaths along the alder,
And mother Robin's babies called her
Just now from their leaf-hidden room,
And sunset roses are in bloom.
Lake Champlain, June, 1918.
TO A CANADIAN AVIATOR WHO DIED FOR HIS COUNTRY IN FRANCE
TOSSED like a falcon from the hunter's wrist,
A sweeping plunge, a sudden shattering noise,
And thou hast dared, with a long spiral twist,
The elastic stairway to the rising sun.
Peril below thee, and above, peril
Within thy car; but peril cannot daunt
Thy peerless heart: gathering wing and poise,
Thy plane transfigured, and thy motor-chant
Subduèd to a whisper—then a silence,—
And thou art but a disembodied venture
In the void.
But Death, who has learned to fly,
Still matchless when his work is to be done,
Met thee between the armies and the sun;
Thy speck of shadow faltered in the sky;
Then thy dead engine and thy broken wings
Drooped through the arc and passed in fire,
A wreath of smoke—a breathless exhalation.
