Sure, sure, if stedfast meaning,
 If single thought could save,
The world might end to-morrow,
 You should not see the grave.

This long and sure-set liking,
 This boundless will to please,
-Oh, you should live for ever
 If there were help in these.

But now, since all is idle,
 To this lost heart be kind,
Ere to a town you journey
 Where friends are ill to find.

XXXIV

THE NEW MISTRESS

_ “Oh, sick I am to see you, will you never let me be?  You may be good for something, but you are not good for me.  Oh, go where you are wanted, for you are not wanted here.” _ And that was all the farewell when I parted from my dear.

“I will go where I am wanted, to a lady born and bred
Who will dress me free for nothing in a uniform of red;
She will not be sick to see me if I only keep it clean: 
I will go where I am wanted for a soldier of the Queen.”

“I will go where I am wanted, for the sergeant does not mind;
He may be sick to see me but he treats me very kind: 
He gives me beer and breakfast and a ribbon for my cap,
And I never knew a sweetheart spend her money on a chap.”

“I will go where I am wanted, where there’s room for one or two,
And the men are none too many for the work there is to do;
Where the standing line wears thinner and the dropping dead lie thick;
And the enemies of England they shall see me and be sick.”

XXXV

On the idle hill of summer,
 Sleepy with the flow of streams,
Far I hear the steady drummer
 Drumming like a noise in dreams.

Far and near and low and louder
 On the roads of earth go by,
Dear to friends and food for powder,
 Soldiers marching, all to die.

East and west on fields forgotten
 Bleach the bones of comrades slain,
Lovely lads and dead and rotten;
 None that go return again.

Far the calling bugles hollo,
 High the screaming fife replies,
Gay the files of scarlet follow: 
 Woman bore me, I will rise.

XXXVI

White in the moon the long road lies,
 The moon stands blank above;
White in the moon the long road lies
 That leads me from my love.

Still hangs the hedge without a gust,
 Still, still the shadows stay: 
My feet upon the moonlit dust
 Pursue the ceaseless way.

The world is round, so travellers tell,
 And straight though reach the track,
Trudge on, trudge on, ’twill all be well,
 The way will guide one back.

But ere the circle homeward hies
 Far, far must it remove: 
White in the moon the long road lies
 That leads me from my love.

XXXVII