Brothers, and I—I taste again,
Again I taste the Wine of Spring
(O Wine of Spring and Bread of Love,
O lips that kiss and mouths that sing,
O Love and Spring in England now!)
Peace! Vex me not, but pass above,
Sweet English love, fleet English Spring—
Peace! Vex me not!...
Then the still living man makes answer, urging them to a resigned acceptance of their loss:
Brothers, I beg you be at rest,
Be quite at rest for England's sake.
The flowerful hours in England now
Sing low your sleep to English ears;
And would you have your sorrows wake
The mother's heart to further tears?—
Nay, be at peace, her loyal Dead.
Sleep! Vex her not!
The pity and tenderness of that are not surpassed in any poem of the war, and the man who wrote it was soon to make the great acceptance himself—he was killed on Vimy Ridge, and maybe some one of his brothers-in-arms saw him laid to rest with much such thoughts as were his when he witnessed a similar scene and wrote 'The Wayside Burial,' which is dated the 4th April 1917, five days before he died:
