|
A Petition
- ALL that a man might ask thou has given me, England,
- Birthright and happy childhood's long heart's-ease,
- And love whose range is deep beyond all sounding
- And wider than all seas:
- A heart to front the world and find God in it,
- Eyes blind enow but not too blind to see
- The lovely things behind the dross and darkness,
- And lovelier things to be;
- And friends whose loyalty time nor death shall weaken
- And quenchless hope and laughter's golden store --
- All that a man might ask thou has given me, England,
- Yet grant thou one thing more:
- That now when envious foes would spoil thy splendour,
- Universed in arms, a dreamer such as I,
- May in thy ranks be deemed not unworthy,
- England, for thee to die.
- Robert Ernest Vernède
To Our Fallen
- YE SLEEPERS, who will sing you?
- We can but give our tears --
- Ye dead men, who shall bring you
- Fame in the coming years?
- Brave souls . . . but who remembers
- The flame that fired your embers? . . .
- Deep, deep the sleep that holds you
- Who one time had no peers.
- Yet maybe Fame's but seeming
- And praise you'd set aside,
- Content to go on dreaming,
- Yea, happy to have died
- If of all things you prayed for --
- All things your valour paid for --
- One prayer is not forgotten,
- One purchase not denied.
- But God grants your dear England
- A strength that shall not cease
- Till she have won for all the Earth
- From ruthless men release,
- And made supreme upon her
- Mercy and Truth and Honour --
- Is this the thing you died for?
- Oh, Brothers, sleep in peace!
- December 1914
- Robert Ernest Vernède
To C. H. V.
- WHAT shall I bring to you, wife of mine?
- When I come back from the war?
- A ribbon your dear brown hair to twine?
- A shawl from a Berlin store?
- Say, should I choose you some Prussian hack
- When the Uhlans we overwhelm?
- Shall I bring you a Potsdam goblet back
- And the crest from a prince's helm?
- Little you'd care what I laid at your feet.
- Ribbon or crest or shawl--
- What if I bring you nothing, sweet,
- Nor maybe come home at all?
- Ah, but you'll know, Brave Heart, you'll know
- Two things I'll have kept to send:
- Mine honour for which you bade me go
- And my love--my love to the end.
- Robert Ernest Vernède
The July Garden
- IT'S July in my garden; and steel-blue are the globe-thistles
- And French grey the willows that bow to every breeze;
- And deep in every currant bush a robber blackbird whistles
- "I'm picking, I'm picking, I'm picking these!"
- So off I go to rout them, and find instead I'm gazing
- At clusters of delphiniums--the seed was small and brown,
- But these are spurs that fell from heaven and caught the most amazing
- Colours of the welkin's own as they came hurtling down.
- And then some roses catch my eye, or maybe some Sweet Williams
- Or pink and white and purple petals of Canterbury bells,
- Or pencilled violas that peep between the three-leaved trilliums
- Or red-hot pokers all aglow or poppies that cast spells--
- And while I stare at each in turn I quite forget or pardon
- The blackbirds--and the blackguards--that keep robbing me of pie;
- For what do such things matter when I have so fair a garden,
- And what is half so lovely as my garden in July?
- Standon, July 1914
- Robert Ernest Vernède
|