Читать книгу More Songs by the Fighting Men - Soldiers Poets: Second Series - Galloway Kyle - Страница 11

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REGINALD F. CLEMENTS

2nd Lieut., Royal Sussex Regiment

I MAY not wait to hear⁠

What says the wind that sweeps across the lea,

And yet I know it speaks, and in its voice

There is some word to make my heart rejoice,

Some message speeding on eternally

⁠That God has not made clear!

⁠I may not wait to find

The secret of the seething sea that flows

Nor ever rests; yet must there be some plan

Above the most exalted thought of man,

Some destiny that none but Heaven knows,

⁠And Heaven keeps me blind!

⁠I may not wait to know

The secret of the towering mountain height

That makes my little self so small and frail

And bids me rest awhile behind the veil,

Because so far beyond it shines the light

⁠And God would have it so!

⁠I may not wait; I see

The hosts of Righteousness go forth to slay

The armies of a people that would turn

From all that makes man's nobler soul to burn,

And yet I feel as now I take my way

⁠My Immortality!

THOUGH I have lived as one whose soul is dead

Nor ever touched my heart-strings to awake.

Some harmony of love that else had fled

From where diviner semblance it might take;

Though I have scorned to hear when there has called

The sterner voice within that bade me rise

And spurn the sloth that held my will enthralled

And veiled my loftier vision to the skies;

This of my slumbering spirit I entreat,

That when I fall and may not rise again,

Or ever this faint heart no more shall beat,

And I have lost the stimulant of pain,

That I some vestige of renown may leave—

Some flower to which posterity may cleave.