Read Ebook: When All the Woods Are Green: A Novel by Mitchell S Weir Silas Weir

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 193 lines and 9278 words, and 4 pages

And there were two who listened wistfully To that glad voice, that sad last voice of all, Who on the morrow after reveille Would make no answer to the muster call; Others would eat their mess, others would fall When the lines formed again into their places, And soon their marching comrades would forget their faces.

One moaned a little and the other turned Painfully sidewise, peering up the bare Shell-furrowed slope. Then, while his deep wound burned, He crawled, slow inch by weary inch, to where The boy lay,--young, he thought, and strangely fair. "You see, I came," he said. "It was a wrench. I thought I'd die. Let's have a light here. What! You're French!

"No matter ... we'll be going pretty soon... Dying 's a lonesome business at the best, And when there's nothing but a ghastly moon And fog for company, I lose my zest. There's a girl somewhere ... well... you know the rest. I'm glad I came. It's hand in hand now, brother. I think I laid you here. I wish 't had been another.

"I never meant it, and you did n't mean For me this ugly gash along my side. Something has pushed us on. Our slate is clean. And long and long after we two have died Some learnedest of doctors will decide What thing it was. But we ... we'll never know. Our business now 's to help make next year's harvest grow.

"You've been at school? College de France! You know Next year I should have heard your Bergson there,-- Greatest since Hegel. Think of Haeckel, though, At my own Jena! Mighty men they were. Not mighty enough for what they had to bear. They read and wrote and taught, but you and I, How have we profited at last? Well, here we lie.

"If I had known you by the silver Rhine, That dreamy country where I had my birth, The land of golden corn and golden wine And surely, I think, the world's most lovely earth,-- I should have loved you, brother, and known your worth. But you were born beside the racing Rhone. Ah, yes, that made the difference. That thing alone.

"We might have fronted this world's stormy weather Hand clasped in hand and seeing eye to eye. What was there we could not have done together? Who dares to say we should have feared to die, Shoulder to shoulder standing, you and I? But now you are slain by me, your unknown friend. I die by your unknowing hand. This ... this is the end!

"And all the love that might have been is blown Far off like clouds that fade across the blue; The game is over and the night shuts down, Blotting the little dreams of me and you And all our hope of all we longed to do. But courage, comrade! It's not hard to die. It's not so lonely now. If only we know why!"

The fog-damp folded closer round the hill And stillness deepened, but the cricket's song Tore at the heavy hem of silence still-- One small voice left of love in a world of wrong. A few dim stars looked down. The yelling throng Of guns had passed beyond the mountain's brow When once again he spoke, but slowly, faintlier now.

"Something discovered that it didn't need us-- Me in the Fatherland and you in France. We were less worth than what it took to feed us, And so life gave us only a little glance. It's true to say we never had a chance. It's like this fog, around, above, below. Reach out your hand to me. Good-night. We'll never know."

And then they lay so still they seemed asleep, For death was near and they had little pain. The midnight did not hear them moan or weep For life and love and gladness lost in vain And faces they would never see again,-- Old friends, old lovers. All seemed at a distance. The minutes crept and crept. They made no strong resistance.

They only lay and looked up at the stars, Feeling they had not known how fair they were. I think their hearts were far from those loud wars As they lay listening to the cricket's chirr Until it faded to a drowsy blur, Dwindled, and died, lost in the distant roar Of waves that plunged and broke on some eternal shore.

THE WATCHER IN THE SKY

She has grown pale and spectral with our wounds And she is worn with memories of woe Older than Karnak. Multitudinous feet Of all the phantom armies of the world Resounding down the hollow halls of time, Have kept their far-off rumor in her ear. For she was old when Nineveh and Tyre And Baalbec of the waste went down in blood; Pompey and Tamburlaine and Genghis Khan Are dreams of only yesternight to her. And still she keeps, chained to a loathsome thing, Her straining, distant paces up and down The vaulted cell, but wistful of an end When all our swarm of shuddering life shall drop Like some dead cooling cinder down the void, Leaving her clean, in blessed barrenness.

HOUSEMATES

This little flickering planet Is such a lonely spark Among the million mighty fires That blaze in the outer dark,

The homeless waste about us Leaves such a narrow span To this dim lodging for a night, This bivouac of man,

That all the heavens wonder In all their alien stars To see us wreck our fellowship In mad fraternal wars.

POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE

With a shout of trumpets and roll of drums, Down the road the music comes And all my heart leaps up to greet The steady tread of the marching feet.

Blare of bugle and shriek of fife... This is the triumphing wine of life! My senses reel and my glad heart sings, My spirit soars on jubilant wings.

Fluttering banners and gonfalons Cover with beauty the murderous guns; 'T is sweet to live, 't were great to die With this vast music marching by.

For all my heart leaps up to greet The steady tread of the marching feet When down the road the music comes With a shout of trumpets and roll of drums.

THE HIDDEN WEAVER

There where he sits in the cold, in the gloom, Of his far-away place by his thundering loom, He weaves on the shuttles of day and of night The shades of our sorrow and shapes of delight. He has wrought him a glimmering garment to fling Over the sweet swift limbs of the Spring, He has woven a fabric of wonder to be For a blue and a billowy robe to the sea, He has fashioned in sombre funereal dyes A tissue of gold for the midnight skies.

But sudden the woof turns all to red. Has he lost his craft? Has he snapped his thread? Sudden the web all sanguine runs. Does he hear the yell of the thirsting guns? While the scarlet crimes and the crimson sins Grow from the dizzying outs and ins Of the shuttle that spins, does he see it and feel? Or is he the slave of a tyrannous wheel?

Inscrutable faces, mysterious eyes, Are watching him out of the drifting skies; Exiles of chaos crowd through the gloom Of the uttermost cold to that thundering room And whisper and peer through the dusk to mark What thing he is weaving there in the dark. Will he leave the loom that he won from them And rend his fabric from hem to hem? Is he weaving with daring and skill sublime A wonderful winding-sheet for time?

Ah, but he sits in a darkling place, Hiding his hands, hiding his face, Hiding his art behind the shine Of the web that he weaves so long and fine. Loudly the great wheel hums and rings And we hear not even the song that he sings. Over the whirr of the shuttles and all The roar and the rush, does he hear when we call?

Only the colors that grow and glow Swift as the hurrying shuttles go, Only the figures vivid or dim That flow from the hastening hands of him, Only the fugitive shapes are we, Wrought in the web of eternity.

VANITAS

Three queens of old in Yemen Beside forgotten streams, Three tall and stately women, Dreamt three great stately dreams Of love and power and pleasure and conquering quinqueremes.

They dreamt of love that squandered All Egypt for a kiss, They dreamt of fame and pondered On proud Persepolis, But most they yearned for the wild delights of pale Semiramis.

They had for lords and lovers Dark kings of Araby, Corsairs and wild sea-rovers From many an alien lea,-- Black-bearded men who loved and fought and won them cruelly.

They reared a dreamlike palace Stately and white and tall As a lily's ivory chalice Where every echoing hall Was rumorous with rustling leaves and plashing water's fall.

There to the tinkling zither And passionate guitars They footed hence and hither Beneath the breathless stars, From bare round breast and shoulder waved their glimmering cymars.

Theirs was an empire's treasure Of gems and rich attire, Love had they beyond measure And wine that burnt like fire; Each stately queen in Yemen found verily her desire.

But beauty waned and smouldered, Love languished into lust, The centuries have mouldered Their raven hair to rust, The desert sand is over them, their darkling eyes are dust.

Their bosoms' pride is sunken Beneath the purple pall, Their smooth round limbs are shrunken, Through clasp and anklet crawl Lithe little snakes, upon their tombs lean lizards twitch and sprawl.

SPENSER'S "FA?RIE QUEENE"

Like some clear well of water in the waste, Some magic well beside the weary miles, This beauty is. I turn aside and taste The cool Lethean drink. Suddenly smiles A leafy world upon me,--peristyles Of flickering shade! The hush is only stirred Where silver runlets brighten down the aisles, From pool to pool rehearsing one low word Answered at drowsy intervals by a lonely bird.

Along the rustling arches and through vast Dim caverns of green solitude are rolled The wintry leaves of all the withered past, One confraternity of common mould. From summers perished, autumn's tarnished gold Long blown to dust in many a fallen glade Is reared this rumorous temple million-boled, This shrine of peace, this whispering colonnade Trembling from court to court with restless sun and shade.

And here a while may weary Fancy turn And loiter by the rote of guttural streams. Brushing the skirts of silence, the stirred fern Breathes softly "hush" and "hush"--a sound that seems Only the fluttering sigh of deepest dreams. Here comes no sound or sight of fevered things... No sight or sound. Green-gold the daylight beams, And deep in the heart of dusk a far bird sings Faint as the feathered beat of her own wavering wings.

Calm singer in the chambers of the dawn, Our hearts are weary singing in the heat When all thy dewy matin hopes are gone And all thy raptures, prophesyings sweet, And fair, false dreams are flying in defeat. O thou, the poet's poet, from thy sky Of ancient morning look thou down and greet Thy brothers of the noon with gentle eye. Lift them from out the dust. Forlorn and low they lie!

Heart-easing poet, sing to us like bells Across wide waters paven by the stains Of sunset; like a vagrant breeze that swells And rises lingering, fails and grows and wanes Along a listening wood; like April rains In which the anemones of dream are born. And though you cannot save us from the pains Of life,--the heat, the insensate noise, the scorn,-- Here may we find our rose, forget a while the thorn.

MORNING ROAD SONG

Let me have my fill of the wide blue air And the emerald cup of the sea And a wandering road blown bright and bare And it is enough for me.

The love of a man is a goodly thing And the love of a woman is true, But give me a rollicking song to sing And a love that is always new.

For I am a rover and cannot stay And blithe at heart am I When free and afoot on a winding way Beneath the great blue sky.

EVENING ROAD SONG

It's a long road and a steep road And a weary road to climb. The air bites chill on the windy hill. At home it is firelight time.

The sunset pales ... along the vales The cottage candles shine And twinkle through the early dew. Thank God that one is mine!

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet