Battle
By Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
I
THE RETURN
He went, and he was gay to go:
And I smiled on him as he went.
My boy! 'Twas well he couldn't know
My darkest dread, or what it meant -
Just what it meant to smile and smile
And let my son go cheerily -
My son ... and wondering all the while
What stranger would come back to me.
II
THE DANCERS
All day beneath the hurtling shells
Before my burning eyes
Hover the dainty demoiselles -
The peacock dragon-flies.
Unceasingly they dart and glance
Above the stagnant stream -
And I am fighting here in France
As in a senseless dream.
A dream of shattering black shells
That hurtle overhead,
And dainty dancing demoiselles
Above the dreamless dead.
III
HIT
Out of the sparkling sea
I drew my tingling body clear, and lay
On a low ledge the livelong summer day,
Basking, and watching lazily
White sails in Falmouth Bay.
My body seemed to burn
Salt in the sun that drenched it through and through
Till every particle glowed clean and new
And slowly seemed to turn
To lucent amber in a world of blue....
I felt a sudden wrench -
A trickle of warm blood -
And found that I was sprawling in the mud
Among the dead men in the trench.