Page:Some soldier poets.djvu/77

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

FRANCIS LEDWIDGE

"And all we learn but shows we know the less."

"When the wind passing took your scattered hair

And flung it like a brown shower in my face."

"Within the oak a throb of pigeon wings."

"And the blue

Of hiding violets, watching for your face,

Listen for you in every dusky place."

"The moon had won

Her way above the woods, with her small star

Behind her like the cuckoo's little mother. ..."

"The bees are holding levees in the flowers."

"Day hangs its light between two dusks, my heart,

Always beyond the dark there is the blue.

Some time we'll leave the dark, myself and you,

And revel in the light for evermore.

But in the dark your beauty shall be strong.

Pigeons are home. Day droops—the fields are cold.

Now a slow wind comes labouring up the sky

With a small cloud long steeped in sunset gold,

Like Jason with the precious fleece anigh

The harbour of Iolcos. Day's bright eye

Is filmed with the tAvilight, and the rill

Shines like a scimitar upon the hill."

These things are strung together with little apparent connection except the rhymes, each poem's structure being the pattern that these make. However, you could glean felicities in such quantities from no other of these Soldier Poets, not even from Brooke; and note that this underlines Brooke's superiority; his reflective and organic power makes more of fewer treasures. The best

73