But most the hills a splendour had put on
Of golden honour, bright and high and calm
And like old heroes young men dream upon
When midnight stirs with magic sword and palm;—­
With the fled mist all meanness put away
And the air clear and keen as salt sea-spray....

And yet no dream; no dream!  I saw the whole,
The reap’d fields, idle kine and wandering sheep. 
A weak wind through the near tall hedge-tree stole,
And died where Dover’s Hill rose bare and steep;
I saw yet what I saw an hour ago,
But knew what save by dreams I did not know—­

Sweet England!—­wild proud heart of things unspoken
Spirit that men bear shyly and love purely;
That dies to live anew a life unbroken
As spring from every winter rising surely: 
Sweet England unto generations sped,
Now bitter-sweetest for her daily dead.

September, 1916.

PRESAGE OF VICTORY

I

Then first I knew, seeing that bent grey head,
How England honours all her thousand dead. 
Then first I knew how faith through black grief burns,
Until the ruined heart glows while it yearns
For one that never more returns—­
Glows in the spent embers of its pride
For one that careless lived and fearless died. 
And then I knew, then first,
How everywhere Hope from her prison had burst—­
On every hill, wide dale, soft valley’s lap,
In lonely cottage clutch’d between huge downs,
And streets confused with streets in clanging towns—­
Like spring from winter’s jail pouring her sap
Into the idle wood of last year’s trees. 
Then first I knew how the vast world-disease
Would die away, and England upon her seas
Shake every scab of sickness; toward new skies
Lifting a little holier her head,
With honesty the brighter in her eyes,
And all that urgent horror well forgot,
The dark remembered not;
Only remembered then, with bosom yet hot,
The blood that on how many a far field lies,
The bones enriching not our English earth
That brought them to such splendid birth
And the last sacrifice.

II

Then first I knew, seeing that head bent low,
How gravely all her days she needs must go,
Bearing an image in her faded breast....

O, the dark unrest
Of thoughts that never cease their flight,
Never vanishing, yet never still,
Like birds that wail round the bewildering nest! 
But other nestlings never shall be hers,
Only a painful image his place fill,
Only a memory remain for her thin bosom to nurse
In all that dark unrest
Of sleepless and tormented night.

III