| THERE seemed a smell of autumn in the air | |
| At the bleak end of night; he shivered there | |
| In a dank, musty dug-out where he lay, | |
| Legs wrapped in sand-bags,—lumps of chalk and clay | |
| Spattering his face. Dry-mouthed, he thought, ‘To-day | 5 |
| We start the damned attack; and, Lord knows why, | |
| Zero’s at nine; how bloody if I’m done in | |
| Under the freedom of that morning sky!’ | |
| And then he coughed and dozed, cursing the din. | |
| |
| Was it the ghost of autumn in that smell | 10 |
| Of underground, or God’s blank heart grown kind, | |
| That sent a happy dream to him in hell?— | |
| Where men are crushed like clods, and crawl to find | |
| Some crater for their wretchedness; who lie | |
| In outcast immolation, doomed to die | 15 |
| Far from clean things or any hope of cheer, | |
| Cowed anger in their eyes, till darkness brims | |
| And roars into their heads, and they can hear | |
| Old childish talk, and tags of foolish hymns. | |
| |
| He sniffs the chilly air; (his dreaming starts), | 20 |
| He’s riding in a dusty Sussex lane | |
| In quiet September; slowly night departs; | |
| And he’s a living soul, absolved from pain. | |
| Beyond the brambled fences where he goes | |
| Are glimmering fields with harvest piled in sheaves, | 25 |
| And tree-tops dark against the stars grown pale; | |
| Then, clear and shrill, a distant farm-cock crows; | |
| And there’s a wall of mist along the vale | |
| Where willows shake their watery-sounding leaves, | |
| He gazes on it all, and scarce believes | 30 |
| That earth is telling its old peaceful tale; | |
| He thanks the blessed world that he was born... | |
| Then, far away, a lonely note of the horn. | |
| |
| They’re drawing the Big Wood! Unlatch the gate, | |
| And set Golumpus going on the grass; | 35 |
| He knows the corner where it’s best to wait | |
| And hear the crashing woodland chorus pass; | |
| The corner where old foxes make their track | |
| To the Long Spinney; that’s the place to be. | |
| The bracken shakes below an ivied tree, | 40 |
| And then a cub looks out; and ‘Tally-o-back!’ | |
| He bawls, and swings his thong with volleying crack,— | |
| All the clean thrill of autumn in his blood, | |
| And hunting surging through him like a flood | |
| In joyous welcome from the untroubled past; | 45 |
| While the war drifts away, forgotten at last. | |
| |
| Now a red, sleepy sun above the rim | |
| Of twilight stares along the quiet weald, | |
| And the kind, simple country shines revealed | |
| In solitudes of peace, no longer dim. | 50 |
| The old horse lifts his face and thanks the light, | |
| Then stretches down his head to crop the green. | |
| All things that he has loved are in his sight; | |
| The places where his happiness has been | |
Are in his eyes, his heart, and they are good.
. . . . | 55 |
| Hark! there’s the horn: they’re drawing the Big Wood. | |