At the road's end glimmer the station lights;
How small beneath the immense hollow of Night's Lonely and living silence!
Air that raced And tingled on the eyelids as we faced The long road stretched between the poplars flying To the dark behind us, shuddering and sighing With phantom foliage, lapses into hush.
Magical supersession!
The loud rush Swims into quiet: midnight reassumes Its solitude; there's nothing but great glooms,
Blurred stars; whispering gusts; the hum of wires.
And swerving leftwards upon noiseless tires We glide over the grass that smells of dew.
A wave of wonder bathes my body through!
For there in the headlamps' gloom--surrounded beam Tall flowers spring before us, like a dream,
Each luminous little green leaf intimate And motionless, distinct and delicate With powdery white bloom fresh upon the stem,
As if that clear beam had created them Out of the darkness.
Never so intense I felt the pang of beauty's innocence, Earthly and yet unearthly.
A sudden call!
We leap to ground, and I forget it all.
Each hurries on his errand; lanterns swing;
Dark shapes cross and re--cross the rails; we bring Stretchers, and pile and number them; and heap The blankets ready.
Then we wait and keep A listening ear.
Nothing comes yet; all's still.
Only soft gusts upon the wires blow shrill Fitfully, with a gentle spot of rain.
Then, ere one knows it, the long gradual train Creeps quietly in and slowly stops.
No sound But a few voices' interchange.
Around Is the immense night--stillness, the expanse Of faint stars over all the wounds of France.
Now stale odour of blood mingles with keen Pure smell of grass and dew.
Now lantern--sheen Falls on brown faces opening patient eyes And lips of gentle answers, where each lies Supine upon his stretcher, black of beard Or with young cheeks; on caps and tunics smeared And stained, white bandages round foot or head Or arm, discoloured here and there with red.
Sons of all corners of wide France; from Lille,
Douay, the land beneath the invader's heel,
Champagne,
Touraine, the fisher--villages Of Brittany, the valleyed Pyrenees,
Blue coasts of the South, old Paris streets.
Argonne Of ever smouldering battle, that anon Leaps furious, brothered them in arms.
They fell In the trenched forest scarred with reeking shell.
Now strange the sound comes round them in the night Of English voices.
By the wavering light Quickly we have borne them, one by one, to the air,
And sweating in the dark lift up with care,
Tense--sinewed, each to his place.
The cars at last Complete their burden: slowly, and then fast We glide away.
And the dim round of sky,
Infinite and silent, broods unseeingly Over the shadowy uplands rolling black Into far woods, and the long road we track Bordered with apparitions, as we pass,
Of trembling poplars and lamp--whitened grass,
A brief procession flitting like a thought Through a brain drowsing into slumber; nought But we awake in the solitude immense!
But hurting the vague dumbness of my sense Are fancies wandering the night: there steals Into my heart, like something that one feels In darkness, the still presence of far homes Lost in deep country, and in little rooms The vacant bed.
I touch the world of pain That is so silent.
Then I see again Only those infinitely patient faces In the lantern beam, beneath the night's vast spaces,
Amid the shadows and the scented dew;
And those illumined flowers, springing anew In freshness like a smile of secrecy From the gloom--buried earth, return to me.
The village sleeps; blank walls, and windows barred.
But lights are moving in the hushed courtyard As we glide up to the open door.
The Chief Gives every man his order, prompt and brief.
We carry up our wounded, one by one.
The first cock crows: the morrow is begun.
