Peace to the sea where the ships of battle ride,
And light again to the eyes of the beautiful slain.

This would I do, but today against the sky,
They who were building a cross grinned as I passed them by.

Pomfret, 1919


XVII

The yellow bird is singing by the pond,
And all about him stars have burst in bloom,
A colonnade stands pallidly beyond,
And beneath that a solitary tomb.
Who lies within that tomb I do not know,
The yellow bird intones his threnody
In notes as colourless as driven snow,
Clashing with the green hush and out of key.

O cease, your endless song is out of tune,
Where all these old forgotten things are sleeping,--
Give back to silence's eternal keeping
The windless pond, the hanging colonnade,
Lest in the wane of the long afternoon,
The Dead awake, unhappy and afraid.

Bordeaux, 1917