No More Learning

"I thought I was dead. "
"You are," cried another. "We're all of us dead and flat. "
"I'm alive as a cricket. There's something wrong with your head. "
They stretched their limbs and argued it out where they sat.
And over the wide field friend and foe
Spoke of small things, remembering not old woe
Of war and hunger, hatred and fierce words.
They sat and listened to the brooks and birds,
And watched the starlight perish in pale flame,
Wondering what God would look like when He came.

_Hermann Hagedorn_




TO A HERO


We may not know how fared your soul before
Occasion came to try it by this test.
Perchance, it used on lofty wings to soar;
Again, it may have dwelt in lowly nest.

We do not know if bygone knightly strain
Impelled you then, or blood of humble clod
Defied the dread adventure to attain
The cross of honor or the peace of God.

We see but this, that when the moment came
You raised on high, then drained, the solemn cup--
The grail of death; that, touched by valor's flame,
The kindled spirit burned the body up.

_Oscar C. A. Child_




RUPERT BROOKE

(IN MEMORIAM)


I never knew you save as all men know
Twitter of mating birds, flutter of wings
In April coverts, and the streams that flow--
One of the happy voices of our Springs.
A voice for ever stilled, a memory,
Since you went eastward with the fighting ships,
A hero of the great new Odyssey,
And God has laid His finger on your lips.

_Moray Dalton_




THE PLAYERS


We challenged Death. He threw with weighted dice.
We laughed and paid the forfeit, glad to pay--
Being recompensed beyond our sacrifice
With that nor Death nor Time can take away.

_Francis Bickley_




A SONG


Oh, red is the English rose,
And the lilies of France are pale,
And the poppies grow in the golden wheat,
For the men whose eyes are heavy with sleep,
Where the ground is red as the English rose,
And the lips as the lilies of France are pale,
And the ebbing pulses beat fainter and fainter and fail.

Oh, red is the English rose,
And the lilies of France are pale.
And the poppies lie in the level corn
For the men who sleep and never return.
But wherever they lie an English rose
So red, and a lily of France so pale,
Will grow for a love that never and never can fail.

_Charles Alexander Richmond_




HARVEST MOON


Over the twilight field,
Over the glimmering field
And bleeding furrows, with their sodden yield
Of sheaves that still did writhe,
After the scythe;
The teeming field, and darkly overstrewn
With all the garnered fullness of that noon--
Two looked upon each other.
One was a Woman, men had called their mother:
And one the Harvest Moon.

And one the Harvest Moon
Who stood, who gazed
On those unquiet gleanings, where they bled;
Till the lone Woman said:

"But we were crazed. . . .
We should laugh now together, I and you;
We two.
You, for your ever dreaming it was worth
A star's while to look on, and light the earth;
And I, for ever telling to my mind
Glory it was and gladness, to give birth
To human kind.