Fulfilment
Was there love once?
I have forgotten her.
Was there grief once?
Grief yet is mine.
Other loves I have, men rough, but men who stir More grief, more joy, than love of thee and thine.
Faces cheerful, full of whimsical mirth,
Lined by the wind, burned by the sun;
Bodies enraptured by the abounding earth,
As whose children we are brethern: one.
And any moment may descend hot death To shatter limbs!
Pulp, tear, blast Belovèd soldiers who love rough life and breath Not less for dying faithful to the last.
O the fading eyes, the grimed face turned bony,
Oped mouth gushing, fallen head,
Lessening pressure of a hand, shrunk, clammed and stony!
O sudden spasm, release of the dead!
Was there love once?
I have forgotten her.
Was there grief once?
Grief yet is mine.
O loved, living, dying, heroic soldier,
All, all my joy, my grief, my love, are thine.
Robert Nichols
Other author posts
I must remember now
I must remember now how once I woke To find the harsh lamplight stream upon her bed, The ceiling tremble in its giddy smoke, And on the wall the agile spider spread, To hear the reverberate vault of silence shake Beneath the hollow ...
The Sprig of Lime
He lay, and those who watched him were To see unheralded beneath the Twin tears, new-gathered at the price of pain, Start and at once run crookedly
The Stranger
Never am I so As when I walk among the crowd — Blurred masks of stern or grinning stone, Unmeaning eyes and voices loud Gaze dares not encounter gaze,…Humbled,
Evenstar
Evenstar, still If this twilight thou dost On a more unhappy head, On tears lonelier than mine,
