And for old quiet things
Have set the strife of kings,
Who battled have with bloody hands
Through evil times in barren lands,
To whom the voice of guns
Speaks but no longer stuns,
Calm, though with death encompassed,
That watch the hours go overhead,
Knowing too well we must
With all men come to dust....
And in 'Anglia Valida in Senectute' glimmers a knowledge that not only the beauty and happiness of the world are passing away from him:
We are old, we are old, and worn and school'd with ills,
Maybe our road is almost done,
Maybe we are drawn near unto the hills
Where rest is and the setting sun.
He cannot, in the trenches, remember Oxford but the thought intrudes:
A little while, and we are gone;
God knows if it be ours to see
Again the earliest hoar-frost white
On the long lawns of Trinity.
Counting over his comrades who have fallen, he wonders:
