The Old Vicarage, Grantchester
(Café des Westens, Berlin, May 1912)
Just now the lilac is in bloom,
All before my little room ;
And in my flower-beds, I think,
Smile the carnation and the pink ;
And down the borders, well I know,
The poppy and the pansy blow...
Oh ! there the chestuts, summer though,
Beside the river make for you
A tunnel of green glooom, and sleep
Deeply above ; and green and deep
The stream mysterious glides beneath,
Green as a dream and deep as death.
- Oh, damn ! I know it ! and I know
How the May fields all golden show,
And when the day is young and sweet,
Gild gloriously the bare feet
That run to bathe...
Du lieber Gott !
The Way that Lovers Use
The way that lovers use is this ;
They bow, catch hands, with never a word,
And their lips meet, and they do kiss,
- So I have heard.
They queerly find some healing so,
And strange attainment in the touch ;
There is a secret lovers know
- I have read as much.
And theirs no longer joy nor smart,
Changing or ending, night or day ;
But mouth to mouth, and heart on heart,
- So lovers say.
1913
The Soldier
If I should die, think only this of me :
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed ;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given ;
Her sights and sounds ; dreams happy as her day ;
And laughter, learnt of friends ; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
Then only in the empty spaces,
Death, walking very silently,
Shall fear the glory of our faces
Through all the dark infinity.
So, clothed about with perfect love,
The eternal end shall find us one,
Alone above the Night, above
The dust of the dead gods, alone.
1907