Will Streets: Shelley in the Trenches 2nd May 1916 (Poem)

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

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