Classic Poem

(For J.N., died of wounds, October, 1916.)

So you are dead. We lived three months together,
But in these years how absence can divide!
We did not meet again. I wonder whether
You thought of me at all before you died.

There in that whirl of unaccustomed faces,
Strange, friendless, ill, I found in you a friend —
And then at last in these divided places,
For you in France and here for me the end.

For friendship's memory was short and faithless
And time went by that will not come again,
And you are dead of wounds and I am scatheless
Save as my heart has sorrowed for my slain.

I wonder whether you were long in dying,
Where, in what trench and under what dim star,
With drawn face on the clayey bottom lying,
While still the untiring guns cried out afar.

I might have been with you, I might have seen you
Reel to the shot with blank and staring eye,
I might have held you up ... I might have been you
And lain instead of you where now you lie.

Here in our quietude strange fancy presses,
Dark thoughts of woe upon the empty brain,
And fills the streets and the pleasant wildernesses
With forms of death and ugly shapes of pain.

You are long dead. A year is nearly over,
But still your voice leaps out again amid
The tangled memories that lie and cover
With countless trails what then we said and did.

And still in waking dreams I sit and ponder
Pleasures that were and, as my working brain
Deeper in revery will stray and wander,
I think that I shall meet with you again.

And make my plans and half arrange the meeting,
And half think out the words that will be said
After the first brief, careless, pleasant greeting. ...
Then suddenly I remember you are dead.