Читать книгу The Searchlights - Wilfrid Wilson Gibson - Страница 5

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The soldiers in encampment on the down,

After the nightlong route-march, sprawling lie

With closed lids or eyes staring drowsily

From weary youthful faces, weathered brown,

Into the intense blue of the noonday sky,

From which the lark-notes tinkle pleasantly

Trilling through dazed exhausted minds that still

Keep marching, marching through a thunderous night

Of breathless darkness, marching on, until

The music sprinkled through the quivering light

Lulls them asleep.

Lulls them asleep.And, weary as the rest,

Young Richard on the barrow’s grassy breast

Lies curled, with burning eyes and aching brow,

Longing to fall asleep, too. But, somehow,

No slumber comes to him, as still his mind

Stumbles through sultry darkness, thick and blind—

A darkness that is nigh as dense and deep

As that which closed on the death-dimming eyes

Of the British warrior, who, to him unknown,

With prized utensils and flint weapons lies

Beneath him in his burial kist of stone

Within the bosom of the barrow asleep—

Lies in a slumber of oblivious night,

His death-throes long since over, and knowing not,

Although his ancient wars are long forgot,

That ever in new quarrels men still fight.