ARES, GOD OF WAR.
UNDER the stars the armies lie asleep:
Between the lines a quiet river flows
Through brakes of honeysuckle and of rose
And fields where poppies droop in languor deep:
The night as with a mantle now enfolds
The muffled forms upon the pasture low;
The scent of thyme comes down across the wolds,
And on the roses of the dark hedgerow
The summer starlight falls in flakes of silver snow.
Here from the wooded haunt of nymph and fawn
The hidden guns peer forth across the hills,
Their wheels are on the trampled daffodils,
And so they wait the coming of the dawn.
In dappled shadows, where the fairy weaves
On grasses tall his web of sparkling lace,
The gunners lie, their heads upon the sheaves:
White falls the moon on many a sunburnt face,
That ere the day shall feel another God's embrace.
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