web hosting short URLs photo sharing

I

FROM you, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart,

The substance of my dreams took fire.

You built cathedrals in my heart,

And lit my pinnacled desire.

You were the ardour and the bright

Procession of my thoughts toward prayer.

You were the wrath of storm, the light

On distant citadels aflare.

II

Great names, I cannot find you now

In these loud years of youth that strives

Through doom toward peace: upon my brow

I wear a wreath of banished lives.

You have no part with lads who fought

And laughed and suffered at my side.

Your fugues and symphonies have brought

No memory of my friends who died.

III

For when my brain is on their track,

In slangy speech I call them back.

With fox-trot tunes their ghosts I charm.

'Another little drink won't do us any harm.'

I think of rag-time; a bit of rag-time;

And see their faces crowding round

To the sound of the syncopated beat.

They've got such jolly things to tell,

Home from hell with a Blighty wound so neat...

....

And so the song breaks off; and I'm alone.

They're dead ... For God's sake stop that gramophone.

Wraiths.

They know not the green leaves

In whose earth haunting dream

Dimly the forest heaves,

And voiceless goes the stream

Strangely they seek a place

In love's night-memoried hall

Peering from face to face

Until some heart shall call

And keep them- for a breath

Half mortal...hark to the rain!

They are dead, oh hear how death

gropes on the shutter'd pane