Catching his golden helmet as he ran, Down to their coasts, I shouting after him: Famished and lame, I came at last to Dieppe, - John Finley I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade, When Spring comes round with rustling shade I have a rendezvous with Death When Spring brings back blue days and fair. It may be he shall take my hand And close my eyes and quench my breath - I have a rendezvous with Death On some scarred slope of battered hill, ... God knows 'twere better to be deep The moon had long since sunk behind the mists; Gazing in wonder. Silently, his sheaves on either hand, Grimly he gazed on each, and carefully While Mother Earth o'er each her dew had wept, And by each side a rusty bayonet lay, Pointing the way. Thus he came; and ever and anon Lingering o'er something precious lying numbly, For this, which human eyes might shrink to scan. — Had been a man. A drowsy sentry saw him as he passed, Challenged : and receiving no reply, Fired at the darkness; - but the bullet found And from the east the morning's icy breath A sudden star-shell leaped toward the sky, On either side a coldly staring eye Wearily the sun climbed to his post To watch the struggling world as on it rolls Dripping with blood from youth's best vintage pressed, Up out from yonder where the dead repose - P. S. M. THE TRENCHES1 Endless lanes sunken in the clay, Bays, and traverses, fringed with wasted herbage, Brilliant with frosty stars. We stumble, cursing, on the slippery duck-boards. A will stronger than weariness, stronger than animal fear, Here a shaft, slanting, and below A dusty and flickering light from one feeble candle And prone figures sleeping uneasily,. Murmuring, And men who cannot sleep, With faces impassive as masks, Bright, feverish eyes, and drawn lips, Sad, pitiless, terrible faces, Each an incarnate curse. Here in a bay, a helmeted sentry Silent and motionless, watching while two sleep, With indifferent eyes the blasted and torn land Dead are the lips where love laughed or sang, And these were begotten, 1 By permission, from Eidola. Copyright by E. P. Dutton & Company. O Love, and lived lightly, and burnt With the lust of a man's first strength: ere they were rent, Almost at unawares, savagely; and strewn In bloody fragments, to be the carrion NO-MAN'S LAND No-Man's Land is an eerie sight What are the bounds of No-Man's Land? Or a furrow of brown where the earthworks run But No-Man's Land is a goblin sight When patrols crawl over at dead o' night; You dice with death when you cross the trench. |