I tell you all the wisdom of the world
Is waiting for you on those shelves; and yet
You sit and gnaw your nails, and let your pipe out,
And listen to the silence: on the ceiling
There's one big, dizzy moth that bumps and flutters;
And in the breathless air outside the house
The garden waits for something that delays.
There must be crowds of ghosts among the trees,--
Not people killed in battle,--they're in France,--
But horrible shapes in shrouds--old men who died
Slow, natural deaths,--old men with ugly souls,
Who wore their bodies out with nasty sins.
* * * * *
You're quiet and peaceful, summering safe at home;
You'd never think there was a bloody war on! ...
O yes, you would ... why, you can hear the guns.
Hark! Thud, thud, thud,--quite soft ... they never cease--
Those whispering guns--O Christ, I want to go out
And screech at them to stop--I'm going crazy;
I'm going stark, staring mad because of the guns.
THE TRIUMPH
When life was a cobweb of stars for Beauty who came
In the whisper of leaves or a bird's lone cry in the glen,
On dawn-lit hills and horizons girdled with flame
I sought for the triumph that troubles the faces of men.
With death in the terrible flickering gloom of the fight
I was cruel and fierce with despair; I was naked and bound;
was stricken: and Beauty returned through the shambles of night;
In the faces of men she returned; and their triumph I found.
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