And turned but once e'er the door was shut,Shouting to Eldred over his buttThat he bring all spears to the woodman's hut Hewn under Egbert's Stone.
And he turned his back and broke the fern And fought the moths of dusk;And went on his way for other friends —Friends fallen of all the wide world's ends;From Rome that wrath and pardon sends And the gray towns on Usk.
He saw gigantic tracks of death And many a shape of doom,Good steadings to grey ashes goneAnd a monk's house, white like a skeleton, In the green crypt of the combe.
And in many a Roman villa Earth and her ivies eat,Saw coloured pavements sink and fadeIn flowers; and the windy colonnade Like the spectre of a street.
But the cold stars clustered Among the cold pinesEre he was half on his pilgrimage Over the western lines.
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