So with your spirit was it day by day,
  That spirit unextinguishably gay,
  That to the very border of the shade
  Laughed on the muttering darkness unafraid. 
  We shall be lonely for your lovely face,
  Lonely for all your great and gracious ways,
  But for your laughter loneliest of all.

  Yet in our loneliness we think of one
  Lonely no more, who, on the heavenly stair,
  Awaits your face, and hears your step at last,
  His dreamer’s eyes a glory like the sun,
  Again in his sad arms to hold you fast,
  All your long honeymoon in heaven begun.

  Thinking on that, O dear and loveliest friend,
  We, in that bright beginning of this end,
  Must bate our grief, and count our mortal loss
  Only as his and your immortal gain,
  Glad that for him and you it is so well.

  Lucy, O Lucy, a little while farewell.

  V

  OTHER MATTERS, SACRED AND PROFANE

  THE WORLD’S MUSQUETEER:  TO MARSHAL FOCH

  (Ballade a double refrain)

  Marshal of France, yet still the Musqueteer,
    Comrade at arms, on your bronzed cheek we press
  The soldier’s kiss, and drop the soldier’s tear;
    Brother by brother fought we in the stress
  Of the locked steel, all the wild work that fell
  For our reluctant doing; we that stormed hell
  And smote it down together, in the sun
  Stand here once more, with all our fighting done,
    Garlands upon our helmets, sword and lance
  Quiet with laurel, sharing the peace they won: 
    Soldier that saved the world in saving France.

  Soldier that saved the world in saving France,
    France that was Europe’s dawn when light was none,
  Clear eyes that with eternal vigilance
    Pierce through the webs in nether darkness spun,
    Soul of man’s soul, his sentinel upon
    The ramparts of the world:  Ah!  France, ’twas well
    This soldier with the sword of Gabriel
  Was yours and ours in all that dire duresse,
    This soldier, gentle as a child, that here
  Stands shy and smiling ’mid a world’s caress—­
    Marshal of France, yet still the Musqueteer.

  Marshal of France, yet still the Musqueteer,
    True knight and succourer of the world’s distress
  His might and skill we laurel, but more dear
    Our soldier for that “parfit gentlenesse”
  That ever in heroic hearts doth dwell,
  That soul as tranquil as a vesper bell,
  That glory in him that would glory shun,
  Those kindly eyes alive with Gascon fun,
    D’Artagnan’s brother—­still the old romance
  Runs in the blood, thank God! and still shall run: 
    Soldier that saved the world in saving France.

  ENVOI