Part 18

Last Poems

1916

The Aisne (1914-15)

We first saw fire on the tragic slopes Where the flood-tide of France's early gain, Big with wrecked promise and abandoned hopes, Broke in a surf of blood along the Aisne.

The charge her heroes left us, we assumed, What, dying, they reconquered, we preserved, In the chill trenches, harried, shelled, entombed, Winter came down on us, but no man swerved.

Winter came down on us. The low clouds, torn In the stark branches of the riven pines, Blurred the white rockets that from dusk till morn Traced the wide curve of the close-grappling lines.

In rain, and fog that on the withered hill Froze before dawn, the lurking foe drew down; Or light snows fell that made forlorner still The ravaged country and the ruined town;

Or the long clouds would end. Intensely fair, The winter constellations blazing forth -- Perseus, the Twins, Orion, the Great Bear -- Gleamed on our bayonets pointing to the north.

And the lone sentinel would start and soar On wings of strong emotion as he knew That kinship with the stars that only War Is great enough to lift man's spirit to.

And ever down the curving front, aglow With the pale rockets' intermittent light, He heard, like distant thunder, growl and grow The rumble of far battles in the night, --

Rumors, reverberant, indistinct, remote, Borne from red fields whose martial names have won The power to thrill like a far trumpet-note, -- Vic, Vailly, Soupir, Hurtelise, Craonne . . .

Craonne, before thy cannon-swept plateau, Where like sere leaves lay strewn September's dead, I found for all dear things I forfeited A recompense I would not now forego.

For that high fellowship was ours then With those who, championing another's good, More than dull Peace or its poor votaries could, Taught us the dignity of being men.

There we drained deeper the deep cup of life, And on sublimer summits came to learn, After soft things, the terrible and stern, After sweet Love, the majesty of Strife;

There where we faced under those frowning heights The blast that maims, the hurricane that kills; There where the watchlights on the winter hills Flickered like balefire through inclement nights;

There where, firm links in the unyielding chain, Where fell the long-planned blow and fell in vain -- Hearts worthy of the honor and the trial, We helped to hold the lines along the Aisne.

Champagne (1914-15)

In the glad revels, in the happy fetes, When cheeks are flushed, and glasses gilt and pearled With the sweet wine of France that concentrates The sunshine and the beauty of the world,

Drink sometimes, you whose footsteps yet may tread The undisturbed, delightful paths of Earth, To those whose blood, in pious duty shed, Hallows the soil where that same wine had birth.

Here, by devoted comrades laid away, Along our lines they slumber where they fell, Beside the crater at the Ferme d'Alger And up the bloody slopes of La Pompelle,

And round the city whose cathedral towers The enemies of Beauty dared profane, And in the mat of multicolored flowers That clothe the sunny chalk-fields of Champagne.

Under the little crosses where they rise The soldier rests. Now round him undismayed The cannon thunders, and at night he lies At peace beneath the eternal fusillade. . . .

That other generations might possess -- From shame and menace free in years to come -- A richer heritage of happiness, He marched to that heroic martyrdom.

Esteeming less the forfeit that he paid Than undishonored that his flag might float Over the towers of liberty, he made His breast the bulwark and his blood the moat.

Obscurely sacrificed, his nameless tomb, Bare of the sculptor's art, the poet's lines, Summer shall flush with poppy-fields in bloom, And Autumn yellow with maturing vines.

There the grape-pickers at their harvesting Shall lightly tread and load their wicker trays, Blessing his memory as they toil and sing In the slant sunshine of October days. . . .

I love to think that if my blood should be So privileged to sink where his has sunk, I shall not pass from Earth entirely, But when the banquet rings, when healths are drunk,

And faces that the joys of living fill Glow radiant with laughter and good cheer, In beaming cups some spark of me shall still Brim toward the lips that once I held so dear.