They left him lean,
Those strenuous days, but oh! they left him clean
And tingling with the glow of primal joys:
Rough jests of boys,
The taste of bread, the shelter of the tent,
The marching song, the couch beneath the stars,
The laugh triumphant over shocks and jars.
Rent after rent
Gaped in the cloak of shibboleths effete,
Blasts of strong passion through the tatters beat,
Till the last remnant to the wind was borne,
And one grey morn
He rose in fibred panoply. At noon
They numbered off the men of his platoon;
And when they rose to drink to him that night,
The toast "The fight!"
He drained his glass, then lifted it on high:
"England or die!"
Oh! see them now as they swing billetwards,
Out of the dusk into the growing light,
At the grey end of a long Flanders night;
Each face accords
In colour with the dawn, but the tired eyes
Are eyes of veterans; rhythmic beat
Braces the loins, lightens the weary feet;
Song-snatches rise
And fall down the loose files; one lifts his head
To meet the morn but communes with the dead—
His comrade dead, filling a shallow grave
Beneath the nave
Of low grey skies—curses the shrapnel death,
Catches the chorus with his shuddering breath,
Swings to the march again. There in the rear,
Last to appear
The leader comes, a stripling at his side;
The alchemy of night has decked his age
With a strange garb of youth; but to assuage
Time's hungry tide
