Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/316

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

316
AUXILIARIES

And when our griefs have passed on gloomy wing,
When friend and foe are sped,
Sons of a morning to be born shall sing
The radiant Cross of Red;
Sons of a morning to be born shall sing
The radiant Cross of Red.


THE HEALERS

IN a vision of the night I saw them,
In the battles of the night.
'Mid the roar and the reeling shadows of blood
They were moving like light,


Light of the reason, guarded
Tense within the will,
As a lantern under a tossing of boughs
Burns steady and still.


With scrutiny calm, and with fingers
Patient as swift
They bind up the hurts and the pain-writhen
Bodies uplift,


Untired and defenceless; around them
With shrieks in its breath
Bursts stark from the terrible horizon
Impersonal death;


But they take not their courage from anger
That blinds the hot being;
They take not their pity from weakness;
Tender, yet seeing;


Feeling, yet nerved to the uttermost;
Keen, like steel;
Yet the wounds of the mind they are stricken with,
Who shall heal?