Page:Sonnets and poems, Masefield, 1916.djvu/30

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XXII.

HERE, where we stood together, we three men,
Before the war had swept us to the East,
Three thousand miles away, I stand agen
And hear the bells, and breathe, and go to feast.
We trod the same path, to the self-same place,
Yet here I stand, having beheld their graves,
Skyros whose shadows the great seas erase,
And Sedd-el-Bahr that ever more blood craves.
So, since we communed here, our bones have been
Nearer, perhaps, than they again will be.
Earth and the world-wide battle lie between,
Death lies between, and friend-destroying sea.
Yet here, a year ago, we talked and stood
As I stand now, with pulses beating blood.


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