  I To-night o'er Bagshot heath the purple heather Rolls like dumb thunder to the splendid West; And mighty ragged clouds are massed together Above the scarred old common's broken breast; Red glints of fiercer blossom, bright and bold; And round the shaggy mounds and sullen shoulders The gorse repays the sun with savage gold. And now, as in the West the light grows holy, And all the hollows of the heath grow dim, Far off, a sulky rumble rolls up slowly Where guns at practice growl their evening hymn. And here and there in bare clean yellow spaces The print of horse-hoofs like an answering cry Strikes strangely on the sense from lonely places Where there is nought but empty heath and sky. The print of warlike hoofs, where now no figure Of horse or man along the sky's red rim Breaks on the low horizon's rough black rigour To make the gorgeous waste less wild and grim; Strangely the hoof-prints strike, a Crusoe's wonder, Framed with sharp furze amongst the footless fells, A menace and a mystery, rapt asunder, As if the whole wide world contained nought else,— Nought but the grand despair of desolation Between us and that wild, how far, how near, Where, clothed with thunder, nation grapples nation, And Slaughter grips the clay-cold hand of Fear. II And far above the purple heath the sunset stars awaken, And ghostly hosts of cloud across the West begin to stream, And all the low soft winds with muffled cannonades are shaken, And all the blood-red blossom draws aloof into a dream; A dream of two great stormy hosts embattled in the sky; For there against the low red heavens each sombre ridge of heather Up-heaves a hedge of bayonets around a battle-cry; Melts in the distant battle-field or brings the dream so near it That, almost, as the rifted clouds around them swim and reel, A thousand grey-lipped faces flash—ah, hark, the heart can hear it— The sharp command that lifts as one the levelled lines of steel. And through the purple thunders there are silent shadows creeping With murderous gleams of light, and then—a mighty leaping roar Where foe and foe are met; and then—a long low sound of weeping As Death laughs out from sea to sea, another fight is o'er. Another fight—but ah, how much is over? Night descending Draws o'er the scene her ghastly moon-shot veil with piteous hands; But all around the bivouac-glare the shadowy pickets wending See sights, hear sounds that only war's own madness understands. No circle of the accursed dead where dreaming Dante wandered, No city of death's eternal dole could match this mortal world Where men, before the living soul and quivering flesh are sundered, Through all the bestial shapes of pain to one wide grave are hurled. But in the midst for those who dare beyond the fringe to enter Be sure one kingly figure lies with pale and blood-soiled face, And round his brows a ragged crown of thorns; and in the centre Of those pale folded hands and feet the sigil of his grace. See, how the pale limbs, marred and scarred in love's lost battle, languish; See how the splendid passion still smiles quietly from his eyes: Come, come and see a king indeed, who triumphs in his anguish, Who conquers here in utter loss beneath the eternal skies. For unto lips so deadly calm what answer shall be given? Oh pale, pale king so deadly still beneath the unshaken stars, Who shall deny thy kingdom here, though heaven and earth were riven, With the last roar of onset in the world's intestine wars? The laugh is Death's; he laughs as erst o'er hours that England cherished, "Count up, count up the stricken homes that wail the first-born son, Count by your starved and fatherless the tale of what hath perished; Then gather with your foes and ask if you—or I—have won." III The world rolls on; and love and peace are mated: Still on the breast of England, like a star, The blood-red lonely heath blows, consecrated, A brooding practice-ground for blood-red war. Yet is there nothing out of tune with Nature There, where the skylark showers his earliest song, Where sun and wind have moulded every feature, And one world-music bears each note along. There many a brown-winged kestrel swoops or hovers In poised and patient quest of his own prey; And there are fern-clad glens where happy lovers May kiss the murmuring summer noon away. There, as the primal earth was—all is glorious Perfect and wise and wonderful in view Of that great heaven through which we rise victorious O'er all that strife and change and death can do. No nation yet has risen o'er earth's first nature; Though love illumed each individual mind, Like some half-blind, half-formed primeval creature The State still crawled a thousand years behind. Still on the standards of the great World-Powers Lion and bear and eagle sullenly brood, Whether the slow folds flap o'er halcyon hours Or stream tempestuously o'er fields of blood. By war's red evolution we have risen Far, since fierce Erda chose her conquering few, And out of Death's red gates and Time's grey prison T |
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