And he pointed over the stubble to a way he'd lately found
That led to the steeper Down-crest by a sheep-track coiling round.
And I saw the lonely ocean with but one destroyer in sight
All round from Ventnor town to the Needles glimmering white,
A squat black beetle-body, sole witness in that wide scene
Of the silent, incredible war with the vanishing submarine;
And was wrapt in the air divine that is unto the body as wings,
And unto the soul quintessence of glad, unspeakable things.
I think that, whenever I breathe it, 'twill bring back a thought of that day—
Of Mopsus flicking the bushes in his slouching, leisurely way,
And the brother of whom he told me, as only fourteen tells,
Whole among thousands mangled at the deathly Dardanelles.
Perhaps on a Turkish hillside he is gazing up at the sky,
As he thinks of the far home-coming and the things that money 'll buy;
And a Spartan school has taught him some other, harder sums,
Which he calculates, like Mopsus, till a day of reckoning comes.
April, 1915.
THE HELL-GATE OF SOISSONS
MY name is Darino, the poet. You have heard? Oui, Comédie Française.
Perchance it has happened, mon ami, you know of my unworthy lays.
Ah, then you must guess how my fingers are itching to talk to a pen;
For I was at Soissons, and saw it, the death of the twelve Englishmen.
