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April Evening, 1916
O sweet blue eve that seems so loath to die,
Trailing the sunset glory into night,
Within the soft, cool strangeness of thy light,
My heart doth seem to find its sanctuary.
The day doth verge with all its secret care,
The thrush is lilting vespers on the thorn;
In Nature’s inner heart seems to be born
A sweet serenity; and over there
Within the shadows of the stealing Night,
Beneath the benison of all her stars
Men, stirr’d to passion by relentless Mars,
Laughing at Death, wage an unceasing fight.
The thunder of the guns, the scream of shells
Now seem to rend the placid evening air:
Yet as the night is lit by many a flare
The thrush his love in one wild lyric tells.
O sweet blue eve! Lingering awhile with thee,
Before the earth with thy sweet dews are wet,
My heart all but thy beauty shall forget
And find itself in thy serenity.
John William (Will) Streets
(1886 –1916)
April Evening, 1916
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More in: - Archive Tombeau de la jeunesse, Archive S-T, Streets, Will, WAR & PEACE
A Soldiers’ Cemetery
Behind that long and lonely trenchèd line
To which men come and go, where brave men die,
There is a yet unmarked and unknown shrine,
A broken plot, a soldiers’ cemet’ry.
There lie the flower of Youth, the men who scorned
To live (so died) when languished liberty:
Across their graves, flowerless and unadorned,
Still scream the shells of each artillery.
When war shall cease this lonely, unknown spot
Of many a pilgrimage will be the end,
And flowers will bloom in this now barren plot
And fame upon it through the years descend –
But many a heart upon each simple cross
Will hang the grief, the memory of its loss.
John William (Will) Streets
(1886 –1916)
A Soldiers’ Cemetery
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
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A Lark Above the Trenches 1916
Hushed is the shriek of hurtling shells: and hark!
Somewhere within that bit of soft blue sky-
Grand in his loneliness, his ecstasy,
His lyric wild and free – carols a lark.
I in the trench, he lost in heaven afar,
I dream of Love, its ecstasy he sings;
Doth lure my soul to love till like a star
It flashes into Life: O tireless wings
That beat love’s message into melody –
A song that touches in this place remote
Gladness supreme in its undying note
And stirs to life the soul of memory –
‘Tis strange that while you’re beating into life
Men here below and plunged in sanguine strife!
John William (Will) Streets
(1886 –1916)
A Lark Above the Trenches 1916
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A Soldier’s Funeral
No splendid show of solemn funeral rite,
No stricken mourners following his bier,
No peal of organ reaching thro’ his night,
Is rendered him whom now we bury here.
‘Tis but a soldier stricken in the fight,
A youth who flung his passion into life,
Flung scorn at Death, fought true for Freedom’s might,
Till Death did close his vision in the strife.
No splendid rite is here – yet lay him low,
Ye comrades of his youth he fought beside,
Close where the winds do sigh and wild flowers grow,
Where the sweet brook doth babble by his side.
No splendour, yet we lay him tenderly
To rest, his requiem the artillery.
John William (Will) Streets
(1886 –1916)
A Soldier’s Funeral
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: - Archive Tombeau de la jeunesse, Archive S-T, Streets, Will, WAR & PEACE
Comrades
Those whom I’ve known, admired, ardently friended
Lie silent there wrapp’d in a soldier’s shroud;
Death broke their dreams, their aspirations ended,
These sanguine youth, noble, brave and proud.
Slowly they bear them ‘neath the dim star light
Unto their rest – the soldiers’ cemetery:
The chaplain chants a low, brief litany;
The nightingale flings rapture on the night.
Back to their Mother Earth this night return
Unnumbered youth along the far-flung line;
But ’tis for these my eyes with feeling burn,
That Memory doth erect a fadeless shrine –
For these I’ve known, admired, ardently friended
Stood by when Death their love, their youth swift ended.
John William (Will) Streets
(1886 –1916)
Comrades
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: - Archive Tombeau de la jeunesse, Archive S-T, Streets, Will, WAR & PEACE
Shelley in the Trenches 2nd May 1916
Impressions are like winds; you feel their cool
Swift kiss upon the brow, yet know not where
They sprang to birth: so like a pool
Rippled by winds from out their forest lair
My soul was stir’d to life; its twilight fled;
There passed across its solitude a dream
That wing’d with supreme ecstasy did seem;
That gave the kiss of life to long-lost dead.
A lark trill’d in the blue: and suddenly
Upon the wings of his immortal ode
My soul rushed singing to the ether sky
And found in visions, dreams, its real abode –
I fled with Shelly, with the lark afar,
Unto the realms where the eternal are.
John William (Will) Streets
(1886 –1916)
Shelley in the Trenches 2nd May 1916
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: - Archive Tombeau de la jeunesse, Archive S-T, Shelley, Percy Byssche, Streets, Will, WAR & PEACE
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