И если помоложе он,
Чем мальчик твой былой,
К тому ж скромнее и честней —
То стань его судьбой,
(Верней маргаритка, чем страстоцвет)
Так лучше нам с тобой.
Фиалки, 1915
Фиалки Плагстритского[86] леса
Я шлю тебе, любовь моя
(И как ни странно: голубые,
Хоть из пробитой головы
Кровь пропитала их, увы;
Но, как ни странно, голубые).
Фиалки Плагстритского леса,
Представь, что значат для меня:
В них Жизнь, Любовь, Надежда, Ты
(Не видела ты, как цветы
Росли, где друг мой пал убитый,
Мой самый лучший друг, укрытый
В тени лесной от света дня).
Я шлю фиалки из-за моря
В твой край забывчивый, в ту даль
На память о године горя,
Ты не поймешь меня едва ль.
Плýгстерт
Я знал любовь, и солнце золотое,
И песни, и восторга времена.
Но как дитя, пресытившись игрою,
Сбежал туда, где прах метет Война.
Я видел кровь и смерть — но все конечно,
И Страх не навсегда в бою со мной;
Мерзка Любовь, что так недолговечна,
Тщедушный отвратителен покой.
Пошли мне поле смерти, Боже Сил,
Дай пламя ада, воинские муки…
Charles Hamilton Sorley (1895–1915)
* * *
Such, such is Death: no triumph: no defeat:
Only an empty pail, a slate rubbed clean,
A merciful putting away of what has been.
And this we know: Death is not Life, effete,
Life crushed, the broken pail. We who have seen
So marvellous things know well the end not yet.
Victor and vanquished are a-one in death:
Coward and brave: friend, foe. Ghosts do not say,
“Come, what was your record when you drew breath?”
But a big blot has hid each yesterday
So poor, so manifestly incomplete.
And your bright Promise, withered long and sped,
Is touched, stirs, rises, opens and grows sweet
And blossoms and is you, when you are dead.
Sonnet to Death
Saints have adored the lofty soul of you.
Poets have whitened at your high renown.
We stand among the many millions who
Do hourly wait to pass your pathway down.
You, so familiar, once were strange: we tried
To live as of your presence unaware.
But now in every road on every side
We see your straight and steadfast signpost there.
I think it like that signpost in my land
Hoary and tall, which pointed me to go
Upward, into the hills, on the right hand,
Where the mists swim and the winds shriek and blow,
A homeless land and friendless, but a land
I did not know and that I wished to know.
* * *
When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you’ll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.
Say only this, “They are dead”. Then add thereto,
“Yet many a better one has died before”.
Then, scanning all the o’ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore.
The Song of the Ungirt Runners
We swing ungirded hips,
And lightened are our eyes,
The rain is on our lips,
We do not run for prize.
We know not whom we trust
Nor whitherward we fare,
But we run because we must
Through the great wide air.
The waters of the seas
Are troubled as by storm.
The tempest strips the trees
And does not leave them warm.
Does the tearing tempest pause?
Do the tree-tops ask it why?
So we run without a cause
’Neath the big bare sky.
The rain is on our lips,
We do
not run for prize.
But the storm the water whips
And the wave howls to the skies.
The winds arise and strike it
And scatter it like sand,
And we run because we like it
Through the broad bright land.
Rooks
There, where the rusty iron lies,
The rooks are cawing all the day.
Perhaps no man, until he dies,
Will understand them, what they say.
The evening makes the sky like clay.
The slow wind waits for night to rise.
The world is half content. But they
Still trouble all the trees with cries,
That know, and cannot put away,
The yearning to the soul that flies
From day to night, from night to day.
* * *
All the hills and vales along
Earth is bursting into song,
And the singers are the chaps
Who are going to die perhaps.
O sing, marching men,
Till the valleys ring again.
Give your gladness to earth’s keeping,
So be glad, when you are sleeping.