Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/252

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252
POETS MILITANT

EVENING CLOUDS

A LITTLE flock of clouds go down to rest
In some blue corner off the moon's highway,
With shepherd winds that shook them in the West
To borrowed shapes of earth, in bright array,
Perhaps to weave a rainbow's gay festoons
Around the lonesome isle which Brooke has made
A little England full of lovely noons,
Or dot it with his country's mountain shade.


Ah, little wanderers, when you reach that isle
Tell him, with dripping dew, they have not failed,
What he loved most; for late I roamed awhile
Thro' English fields and down her rivers sailed;
And they remember him with beauty caught
From old desires of Oriental Spring
Heard in his heart with singing overwrought;
And still on Purley Common gooseboys sing.


SONGS FROM AN EVIL WOOD

I

THERE is no wrath in the stars,
They do not rage in the sky;
I look from the evil wood
And find myself wondering why.


Why do they not scream out
And grapple star against star,
Seeking for blood in the wood
As all things round me are?


They do not glare like the sky
Or flash like the deeps of the wood;
But they shine softly on
In their sacred solitude.