_Born 1887._ _Executed after the Easter Week Rising, 1916._
I see His blood upon the rose And in the stars the glory of His eyes, His body gleams amid eternal snows, His tears fall from the skies.
I see His face in every flower; The thunder and the singing of the birds Are but His voice--and carven by His power Rocks are His written words.
All pathways by His feet are worn, His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea, His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn, His cross is every tree.
So Davies wrote: 'This leaves me in the pink. Then scrawled his name: 'Your loving sweet-heart, Willie' With crosses for a hug. He'd had a drink Of rum and tea; and, though the barn was chilly, For once his blood ran warm; he had pay to spend. Winter was passing; soon the year would mend.
He couldn't sleep that night. Stiff in the dark He groaned and thought of Sundays at the farm, When he'd go out as cheerful as a lark In his best suit to wander arm-in-arm With brown-eyed Gwen, and whisper in her ear The simple silly things she liked to hear.
And then he thought: to-morrow night we trudge Up to the trenches, and my boots are rotten. Five miles of stodgy clay and freezing sludge, And everything but wretchedness forgotten. To-night he's in the pink; but soon he'll die. And still the war goes on; _he_ don't know why.
He drowsed and was aware of silence heaped Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls; Aqueous-like floating rays of amber light, Soaring and quivering in the wings of sleep,-- Silence and safety; and his mortal shore Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death.
Some one was holding water to his mouth, He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped Through crimson gloom to darkness; and forgot The opiate throb and ache that was his wound. Water--calm, sliding green above the weir; Water--a sky-lit alley for his boat, Bird-voiced, and bordered with reflected flowers And shaken hues of summer: drifting down, He dipped contented oars, and sighed, and slept.
Night, with a gust of wind, was in the ward, Blowing the curtain to a glimmering curve. Night. He was blind; he could not see the stars Glinting among the wraiths of wandering cloud; Queer blots of colour, purple, scarlet, green, Flickered and faded in his drowning eyes.