John McCrae

Ye have sung me your songs, ye have chanted your rimes (I scorn your beguiling,
O sea
)Ye fondle me now, but to strike me betimes
(A treacherous lover, the sea

"What I spent I had; what I saved,
I lost; what I gave,
I have
"But yesterday the tourney, all the eager joy of life,      The waving of the banners, and the rattle of the spears,

I saw two sowers in Life's field at morn,
To whom came one in angel guise and said,"Is it for labour that a man is born
Lo:  I am Ease
Come ye and eat my bread

Beneath her window in the fragrant night I half forget how truant years have
Since I looked up to see her chamber-light,
Or catch, perchance, her slender shadow
Upon the casement; but the nodding leaves Sweep lazily across the unlit...

At the drowsy dusk when the shadows
From the golden west, where the sunbeams sleep,
An angel mused:  "Is there good or
In the mad world's heart, since on Calvary's hill'Round the cross a mid-day twilight

He wrought in poverty, the dull grey days,
But with the night his little lamp-lit
Was bright with battle flame, or through a haze Of smoke that stung his eyes he heard the
Of Bluecher's guns; he shared Almeida's scars,

Amid earth's vagrant noises, he caught the note sublime:
To-day around him surges from the silences of TimeA flood of nobler music, like a river deep and broad,
Fit song for heroes gathered in the banquet-hall of God