And I—I watched them working, dreaming, playing,
Saw their young bodies fit the mind's desire,
Felt them reach outward, upward, still obeying
The passionate dictates of their hidden fire.
Yet here and there some greybeard breathed derision,
"Too much of luxury, too soft an age!
Your careless Galahads will see no vision,
Your knights will make no mark on honour's page."
No mark?—Go ask the broken fields in Flanders,
Ask the great dead who watched in ancient Troy,
Ask the old moon as round the world she wanders
What of the men who were my hope and joy!
They are but fragments of Imperial splendour,
Handfuls of might amid a mighty host,
Yet I, who saw them go with proud surrender,
May surely claim to love them first and most.
They who had all, gave all. Their half-writ story
Lies in the empty halls they knew so well,
But they, the knights of God, shall see His glory,
And find the Grail ev'n in the fire of hell.
OXFORD REVISITED IN WAR-TIME
BENEATH fair Magdalen's storied towers
I wander in a dream,
And hear the mellow chimes float out
O'er Cherwell's ice-bound stream.
Throstle and blackbird stiff with cold
Hop on the frozen grass;
Among the aged, upright oaks
The dun deer slowly pass.
