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The Undying

by John Frederick Freeman

In thin clear light unshadowed shapes go by

Small on green fields beneath the hueless sky.

They do not stay for question, do not hear

Any old human speech: their tongue and ear

Seem only thought, for when I spoke they stirred not

And their bright minds conversing my ear heard not.

--Until I slept or, musing, on a heap

Of warm crisp fern lay between sense and sleep

Drowsy, still clinging to a strand of thought

Spider-like frail and all unconscious wrought.

For thinking of that unforgettable thing,

The war, that spreads a loud and shaggy wing

On things most peaceful, simple, happy and bright,

Until the spirit is blind though the eye is light;

Thinking of all that evil, envy, hate,

The cruelty most dark, most desolate;

Thinking of the English dead--"How can you dead,"

I muttered, "with your life and young joy shed,

How can you but in these new lands of life

Relume the fiery passion of old strife--

Just anger, mortal hate, the natural scorn

Of men true-born for all things foully born?"

For I had thought that not death's touch could still

In man's clean spirit the hate of good for ill.

But now to see their shapes go lightly by

On those vast fields, clear 'neath the hueless sky,

With not one furious gesture, and (when seen

With but the broad dark hedgerow space between)

No eye's disdain, no thin drawn face of grief,

But pondering calm or lightened look and brief

Smile almost gay;--yet all seen in the air

That driv'n mist makes unreal everywhere--

"So strange," I breathed, "How can you English dead

Forget them for whose life your life was shed?"

It was no voice that answered, yet plain word

Less plain is than the unspoken that I heard,

As I lay there on the dry heap of fern

And watched them pass, mix, disappear and return,

And felt their mute speech into empty senses burn:

"Earth's is the strife. The Heavenly Powers that sent

The gray globe spinning in the firmament,

The Heavenly Powers that soon or late will stay

The spinning, as a child that tires of play,

And globe by spent globe put forgot away

In some vast airless hollow: could they see

Or seeing endure immortal misery

Made out of mortal, and undying hate

Earth's perishing agonies perpetuate?

O spirits unhappy, if from earth men brought

The mind's disease, the sickness of mad thought!

Sooner the Heavenly Powers would let them lie

Eternally unrising 'neath a sky

Arctic and lonely, where death's starven wind

Raged full-delighted:--sooner would those kind

Serenities man's generation cast

Back into nothingness, than heaven should waste

With finite anguish infinitely prolonged

Until the Eternal Spring were stained and wronged.

O, even the Heavenly Powers at such a breath

From mortal shores would fade and fade to death."

--Was it a voice or but a thought I heard,

Mine or another's, in my boughs that stirred

Waking the leafy darkness of the mind?

Was it a voice, or but a new-roused wind

That answered--"O, I know, I know, I know!

The oldest rivers into the full sea flow

And there are lost: so everything is lost,

On midnight waves into oblivion tost.

Yet--the high passion, the pity, the joy and pride,

The righteousness for which these men have died,

The courage, the uncounted sacrifice,

The love and beauty, all that's beyond all price;

That this, the immortal heart of mortal man,

Should be--O tell me what, tell me again, again--

Petals lost on the river of the years

When April sweetness pauses, fades and disappears!

That this high Quarrel should be quenched in death

As some vexed petty plaint unworthy breath;

That the blood and the tears should never rise

Renewed, accusing in grave judgment skies ...

Tell me again--O, rather tell me not

Lest that ill telling never be forgot."

And then I rose from that warm ferny heap

And my thoughts climbed from the abyss of sleep.

No more in human guise did cloud-shapes pass,

Nor sighed with sad intelligence the grass.

I saw the hueless sky break into blue,

And I remembered how that heaven I knew

When, a small child, I gazed at the great height,

And thought of nothing but the blue and white,

Pools of sweet blue swimming in fields of light.

And as tired men from mine and stithy turn

While still the midnight fires unslackened burn

Flushing their road, and so reach home and then

Dream of old childhood's days and dream again;

So I forgot those inward fires and found

Old happiness like dew lying all around.

Under the hedge I stood and far below

Saw on the Worcester Plain the swift clouds flow

Like ships on seas no greener than the Plain

That shone between October sun and rain;

And thinking how time's plenteousness would bring

Back and more bright the young delicious Spring,

Between wet brambles thrust my hand, and tasted

Ripe berries on neglected boughs that wasted.