DOMINE, QUAMDIU?
(May, 1917)
Last night I dreamed the War was over,
And mute the guns that roared so long:—
The coasts from John O'Groat's to Dover
Reverberant with victorious song.
From every sea the stalwart-hearted
Streamed homeward, shouting to the wind,
Above the thousand wrecks uncharted,
To greet their women, fain and kind.
And crowds besieged them in the Stations,
And cheered and crushed them in the street,
Where, mid a storm of jubilations,
Tramped by their thunderous, marching feet.
After the drum-fire of the Ridges,—
The race with Death on shell-scorched plains,—
The trout-stream spanned with rocking bridges;
The cuckoo challenge down the lanes.
Back out of Khaki into hodden;
Back from the blood-grip to the Game;
The round of peaceful life retrodden,
Yet to be never more the same,
For over them by Hell's red hammer
Battered white-hot, asperged, annealed,
Life broods malignant, stripped of glamour,
With every festering sore revealed.
Only a dream that dare not linger;
Still Death intones his orisons.—
Is there no God can lift a finger
And stop the roaring of the guns?
