ANTI-CLIMAX.
Red embers crackle on the hearth. The dark
Invades the homely cottage living room.
Across the chequered window-pane I mark
An acre of the sky with stars a-bloom.—
And I have ventured many a wan surmise
To-day on life and death, and there has crept
A sadness on me from the sunset skies
To think how long old dreams of mine have slept,
And how the glory of the past fades out,
Those mighty apparitions that appeared
In days more grandiose, and how a drought
Of faith has left our spirits bruised and seared.
For I have loved, how deeply have I loved,
The haunted spots of faith and poetry,
Have looked on Delphi's rock, and musing roved
By Rydalwater and by Domremy;
And I have known the august moods of war,
When we deployed upon the breathless heights
Of man's experience and laid by a store
Of countless dawns and noons and starry nights
Touched with Homeric action on far fronts
In company with the heroic dead,
Living a thousand lives in those few months
Whose pageantry to-day, alas, is fled.
And I remember old simplicities
And whitenesses of soul that mock me now,
And feel remorse for mediocrities
And spurn the gods to whom peace bids me bow.
28
