ODE IN A GERMAN CEMETERY
Where Many Victims of the Great War Were Interred.
Rancour grows chastened in these groves of death,
And clamorous recrimination hushed,
Our pain disarmed by pain,
We can but leave upon these graves the wreath
Our mortal foes by mortal visitation crushed
Have woven for their slain.
Still to this day,
Driven by their bitterness, they come to pray
And kneeling in the wind-blown grass
Grope vainly for relief,
And as I pass
Rise in distressed confusion and sore grief.
What did these know of empire's sordid ends,
Markets and routes and ancient rivalries?
Balance of power and dark expediencies,
Reasons of state,
The vain hallucinations of the great?
Why should these make amends
For others' wrongs?
What guilt for all this ruin here belongs?
Or if some taint of envy or of hate
Were theirs, yet even so,
Which is the greater misery, sin or woe?
Muse on these mute inscriptions, each of which
Stands for a life past divination rich
In poignant exploitations
And eager explorations
Of its allotted freehold in the Day;
Rich in those naïve essays of the heart,
Forlorn, confiding gestures
That of this dark enigma make assay,
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