Clifford J. Druce
Perhaps beside some lonely copse
A brook would flow with less of ease,
The brooding wind that sways the tops
Murmur more plaintive in the trees.
And should you, lingering there alone,
Feel on your face, some evening
Its touch, that stranger, rarer grown,
Clothes some sweet, straining, half-spoke thing;
Know that the fate self-fixed must yet
Endure, whether I die or live;
And I still strive to ease the debt
Of kisses I was born to give.
France, May, 1917.
To a Grave of the Glosters
A WOODEN cross above your head,
You lie, your course already sped;
And in this alien plain must rest
The bones and body Cotswold bred.
Not long since, insolent with life
You made the beech-topped barrow rife
With your tumultuous vivid youth,
With other lads, in sport and strife.
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