From broken brows the dim eyes stared, Blistered and maimed the wide stumps grinned From the black mouth of Thèlus bared In laughter at some monstrous jest. No creature moved there, weed nor wind. Huge arms, half-torn from savage breast, Hung wide, and tangled limbs and faces Lay, as if giants blind and stark With violent, with perverse embraces Groped for each other in the dark. A moaning rose--not of the wind, --There was no wind, but hollowly From its dim bed of mud each tree Gave forth a sound, till trees and mud Seemed but a single, sighing mouth, A wound that spoke with lips uncouth, And cried to me from Thèlus Wood.
I heard one tree say: "This was I Who drew great clouds across the sky To weep against me." This one said: "I made a gloom where love might lie All day and dream it night, a bed Secret and soft, the birds' song had A twilight sound the whole day there." One said: "Last night I shook my hair Before the mirror of the moon." "I saw a corpse to-day," said one "That was but buried yester-year." And one, the smallest, sweetest thing-- A fair child-tree made never stir, Dead before God had tended her In the green nurseries of Spring. She lay, the loveliest, loneliest, Among the old and ruined trees, And at each small and broken wrist The white flowers grew like bandages.
Then from the ruined churchyard where Old vaults and graves lay turned and tossed And earth from earth was shaken bare, Came murmurings of a tongueless host That to each ghastly brother said: "Who raised us from our sleep? Is this The resurrection of the dead? Upon our bodies no flesh grows, No bright blood through our temples springs, No glory spreads, no trumpet blows, The air is not white and blind with wings. And yet dragged up before us lie The woods of Thèlus at our feet, And strange hills sentinel the sky, And where the road went yawns a pit. The world is finished: let us sleep. God has forgotten: we shall keep Here a sweet, safe Eternity. There is no other end than this, And this is death, and that is peace." But even as they ceased the stones Were loosed, the earth shook where I stood, And from far off the crouching guns Swung slowly round on Thèlus Wood.
The mind is Beauty's thief, the poet takes The golden spendthrift's trail among the blooms Where she stands tossing silver in the lakes, And twisting bright swift threads on airy looms. Her ring the poppy snatches, and the rose With laughter plunders all her gusty plumes. The poet gleans and gathers as she goes Heedless of summer's end certain and soon, Of winter rattling at the door of June.