Page:Marlborough and other poems, Sorley, 1919.djvu/24

This page has been validated.

II

STONES

This field is almost white with stones
That cumber all its thirsty crust.
And underneath, I know, are bones,
And all around is death and dust.


And if you love a livelier hue—
O, if you love the youth of year,
When all is clean and green and new,
Depart. There is no summer here.


Albeit, to me there lingers yet
In this forbidding stony dress
The impotent and dim regret
For some forgotten restlessness.


Dumb, imperceptibly astir,
These relics of an ancient race,
These men, in whom the dead bones were
Still fortifying their resting-place.


6