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Page 13
Moret-sur-Loing, 1918
XI
They who have gone down the hill are far away;
From the still valleys I can hear them call;
Their distant laughter faintly floats
Through the unmoving air and back to me.
I am alone with the declining day
And the declining forest where the notes
Of all the happy minstrelsy,
Birds and leaf-music and the rest,
Sink separately in the hush of fall.
The sun and clouds conflicting in the west
Swirl into smoky light together and fade
Under the unbroken shadow;
Under the shadowed peace that is the night;
Under the night's great quietude of shade.
The sheep below me in the meadow
Seem drifting on the haze, serene and white,
Pale pastured dreams, unearthly herds that roam
Where the dead reign and phantoms make their home.
They also pass, even as the clear ring
Of the sad Angelus through the vales echoing.
Montigny, 1918
XII
Where two roads meet amid the wood,
There stands a white sepulchral rood,
Beneath whose shadow, wayfarers
Would pause to offer up their prayers.
There is no house for miles around,
No sound of beast, no human sound,
Only the trees like sombre dreams
From whose bare boughs the water drips;
And the pale memory of death.
The haze hangs heavy without breath,
It hangs so heavy that it seems
To hold a silent finger to its lips.
In after years the spectral cross
Will be quite overgrown with moss,
And wayfarers will go their way
Nor stop to meditate and pray.
The spring will nest in all the trees
Unblighted by the memories
Of autumn and the god of pain.
The leaves will whisper in the sun,
Life will crown death with snowy flowers,
Long hence...but now the autumn lowers,
The sky breaks into gusts of rain,
Turn thee to sleep, the day is nearly done.
Forest of Fontainebleau, 1918
XIII
The boy is late tonight binding his sheaves,
The twilight of these autumn eyes
Falls early now and chill.
The murky sun has set
An hour ago behind the overhanging hill.
Great piles of fallen leaves
Smoulder in every street
And through the columned smoke a scarlet jet
Of flame darts out and disappears.
The boy leans motionless upon his staff,
With all the sorrows of his fifteen years
Gazing out of his eyes into the fall,
A memory ineffable and sweet
Half tinged with voiceless passion, half
Plaintive with sad imaginings that drift
Like echoes of far-off autumnal bells.
He starts up with a laugh,
Binds up the last gaunt sheaf and turns away;
Out of the dusk an inarticulate call
Rings keen across the solemn Berkshire woods,
And then the answer. Impotent farewells
That eager voices lift
Into the hush of the receding day;
Full soon the silence surges in again,
Peaceful, inevitable, deep as death.
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