Hollow the world! hollow the world! And its dancers shadow-grey; And the Moon a silver-shadowy bloom Fading and fading away; And the forest's grey vapour, and all the trees Shadows against the sky; And the soul of man and his ecstasies A night-forgotten cry. Hollow the world! hollow the world!
A year hence may the grass that waves O'er English men in Flemish graves, Coating this clay with green of peace And softness of a year's increase, Be kind and lithe as English grass To bend and nod as the winds pass; It was for grass on English hills These bore too soon the last of ills.
And may the wind be brisk and clean, And singing cheerfully between The bents a pleasant-burdened song To cheer these English dead along; For English songs and English winds Are they that bred these English minds.
And may the circumstantial trees Dip, for these dead ones, in the breeze, And make for them their silver play Of spangled boughs each shiny day. Thus may these look above, and see And hear the wind in grass and tree, And watch a lark in heaven stand, And think themselves in their own land.
Traveller, turn a mournful eye Where my lady's ashes lie; If thou hast a sweet thine own Pity me, that am alone;-- Yet, if thou no lover be, Nor hast been, I'll pity thee.
We digged our trenches on the down Beside old barrows, and the wet White chalk we shovelled from below; It lay like drifts of thawing snow On parados and parapet;
Until a pick neither struck flint Nor split the yielding chalky soil, But only calcined human bone: Poor relic of that Age of Stone Whose ossuary was our spoil.
Home we marched singing in the rain, And all the while, beneath our song, I mused how many springs should wane And still our trenches scar the plain: The monument of an old wrong.
But then, I thought, the fair green sod Will wholly cover that white stain, And soften, as it clothes the face Of those old barrows, every trace Of violence to the patient plain.
And careless people, passing by Will speak of both in casual tone: Saying: "You see the toil they made The age of iron, pick and spade, Here jostles with the Age of Stone."
Yet either from that happier race Will merit but a passing glance; And they will leave us both alone: Poor savages who wrought in stone--Poor Poor savages who fought in France.