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More Songs by the Fighting Men
The Mist
ALWAYS the rolling mist,
Wrapping the scene in wet and fleecy fold,
Moved as a curtain by the sluggish wind,
Lifting and swaying, falling damp and cold,
It sweeps, yet passes never, soft and blind.
Have sunbeams never kissed
These dreary hills and life-forsaken slopes—
Hidden like women's shoulders in a gown
That mars their beauty? Only shattered hopes
And ghostly fears people the shadowed down.
These sunless wreaths are curling round my heart:
The deadening fingers of the passing years
Are closing, and I cannot thrust apart
Their tightening grip. . . . No ray of sun appears,
Only the rolling mist.
Huts, France, December, 1916.
48
