"
He stoops and drinks; a moment the cool bell
Pauses its ringing in the well:
A mist flies up against the dawn; the young winds weep;
Is it too late? I too would drink, drink deep,
But weariness is on me and I sleep.
Cambridge, 1915
XIII - EPILOGUE
Dawn has come.
Faint hazes quiver with the faltering light;
Some airy skein draws in the shadows from
The broken forest where the war has passed,
The Forest Terrible, the grey despair,
The forest broken in the withering blight
Of the lean years,--the blight, the years, have passed,
Leaving a solitary watcher there,
Silence at last.
She watches by the dead,
Her deep white shadow overspreads their faces.
Here in the outland places,
She watches by the dead.
How many dawns have driven her afar
With the loosed thunder of tempestuous wrong!
Today she will remain.
Silence familiar to the morning star,
Standing, her finger to her lips,
Hushing the battle-cry, the victor's song,
Standing inviolate above the slain.
The fugitive sunlight slips
Over the fragment of a cloud,
And the sky opens wide,
Behold the dawn!
Where is the nightmare now? the angry-browed?
The lowering imminence--the bloody eyed?
Fled, as the threat of midnight, fled away,
Gone, after four dark timeless ages, gone.
Hail the day!
Silence, robed in the morning's golden fleece,
Folding the world's torn wings to stillness, giving
Peace to the dead, and to the living,
Peace.
Tours, 1918
XIV - THERMOPYLAE
Men lied to them and so they went to die.
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