many days To say your say as a traveller says, More marvel than woe? Drift then, for the sightless birds And the fish in shadow-waved herds To approach you. Drift then, bread cast out; Drift, lest I fall in doubt, And reproach you. For you are lost to me! 

  

  

       RUINATION     

 THE sun is bleeding its fires upon the mist That huddles in grey heaps coiling and holding back. Like cliffs abutting in shadow a drear grey sea Some street-ends thrust forward their stack. On the misty waste-lands, away from the flushing grey Of the morning the elms are loftily dimmed, and tall As if moving in air towards us, tall angels Of darkness advancing steadily over us all. 

  

  

       RONDEAU OF A CONSCIENTIOUS     

       OBJECTOR.     

 THE hours have tumbled their leaden, mono-        tonous sands And piled them up in a dull grey heap in the West. I carry my patience sullenly through the waste lands; To-morrow will pour them all back, the dull hours I detest. I force my cart through the sodden filth that is pressed Into ooze, and the sombre dirt spouts up at my hands As I make my way in twilight now to rest. The hours have tumbled their leaden, monotonous sands. A twisted thorn-tree still in the evening stands Defending the memory of leaves and the happy round nest. But mud has flooded the homes of these weary lands And piled them up in a dull grey heap in the West. All day has the clank of iron on iron distressed The nerve-bare place. Now a little silence expands And a gasp of relief. But the soul is still compressed:      I carry my patience sullenly through the waste lands. The hours have ceased to fall, and a star commands Shadows to cover our stricken manhood, and blest Sleep to make us forget: but he understands:      To-morrow will pour them all back, the dull hours I detest. 

  

  

       TOMMIES IN THE TRAIN     

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