Classic Poem

I

You came without a human sound,
You came and brought my soul to me;
I only woke, and all around
They slumbered on the firelit ground,
Beside the guns in Burgundy.

II

I felt the gesture of your hands,
You signed my forehead with the Cross;
The gesture of your holy hands
Was bounteous — like the misty lands
Along the Hills in Calvados.

III

But when I slept I saw your eyes,
Hungry as death, and very far.
I saw demand in your dim eyes
Mysterious as the moons that rise
At midnight, in the Pines of Var.