“December stillness, teach me through your treesThat loom along the west, one with the land,The veiled evangel of your mysteries.While nightfall, sad and spacious, on the downDeepens, and dusk embues me where I stand,With grave diminishings of green and brown,Speak, roofless Nature, your instinctive words;And let me learn your secret from the sky,Following a flock of steadfast-journeying birdsIn lone remote migration beating by.December stillness, crossed by twilight roads,Teach me to travel far and bear my loads.”

“Mute in that golden silence hung with green,Come down from heaven and bring me in your eyesRemembrance of all beauty that has been,And stillness from the pools of Paradise.”

“They march from safety, and the bird-sung joyOf grass-green thickets, to the land where allIs ruin, and nothing blossoms but the sky”

“Why do you lie with your legs ungainly huddled,And one arm bent across your sullen coldExhausted face? It hurts my heart to watch you,Deep-shadow'd from the candle's guttering gold;And you wonder why I shake you by the shoulder;Drowsy, you mumble and sigh and turn your head....You are too young to fall asleep for ever;And when you sleep you remind me of the dead.”

“Dim, gradual thinning of the shapeless gloomShudders to drizzling daybreak that revealsDisconsolate men who stamp their sodden bootsAnd turn dulled, sunken faces to the skyHaggard and hopeless. They, who have beaten downThe stale despair of night, must now renewTheir desolation in the truce of dawn,Murdering the livid hours that grope for peace.Yet these, who cling to life with stubborn hands,Can grin through storms of death and find a gapIn the clawed, cruel tangles of his defence.They march from safety, and the bird-sung joyOf grass-green thickets, to the land where allIs ruin, and nothing blossoms but the skyThat hastens over them where they endureSad, smoking, flat horizons, reeking woods,And foundered trench-lines volleying doom for doom.O my brave brown companions, when your soulsFlock silently away, and the eyeless dead,Shame the wild beast of battle on the ridge,Death will stand grieving in that field of warSince your unvanquished hardihood is spent.And through some mooned Valhalla there will passBattalions and battalions, scarred from hell;The unreturning army that was youth;The legions who have suffered and are dust.”

“I am banished from the patient men who fight.They smote my heart to pity, built my pride.Shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side,They trudged away from life's broad wealds of light.Their wrongs were mine; and ever in my sightThey went arrayed in honour. But they died,--Not one by one: and mutinous I criedTo those who sent them out into the night.The darkness tells how vainly I have strivenTo free them from the pit where they must dwellIn outcast gloom convulsed and jagged and rivenBy grappling guns. Love drove me to rebel.Love drives me back to grope with them through hell;And in their tortured eyes I stand forgiven.”

“Before the Battle:Music of whispering treesHushed by the broad-winged breezeWhere shaken water gleams;And evening radiance fallingWith reedy bird-notes calling.O bear me safe through dark, you low-voiced streams.I have no need to prayThat fear may pass away;I scorn the growl and rumble of the fightThat summons me from coolSilence of marsh and pool,And yellow lilies islanded in light.O river of stars and shadows, lead me through the night.”