to labour more,
When, looking up, I saw you standing there
Although I'd caught no footstep on the stair,
Like sudden April at my open door.

Though now beyond earth's farthest hills you fare,
Song-crowned, immortal, sometimes it seems to me
That, if I listen very quietly,
Perhaps I'll hear a light foot on the stair
And see you, standing with your angel air,
Fresh from the uplands of eternity.

III

Your eyes rejoiced in colour's ecstasy,
Fulfilling even their uttermost desire,
When, over a great sunlit field afire
With windy poppies streaming like a sea
Of scarlet flame that flaunted riotously
Among green orchards of that western shire,
You gazed as though your heart could never tire
Of life's red flood in summer revelry.

And as I watched you, little thought had I
How soon beneath the dim low-drifting sky
Your soul should wander down the darkling way,
With eyes that peer a little wistfully,
Half-glad, half-sad, remembering, as they see
Lethean poppies, shrivelling ashen grey.

IV

October chestnuts showered their perishing gold
Over us as beside the stream we lay
In the Old Vicarage garden that blue day,
Talking of verse and all the manifold
Delights a little net of words may hold,
While in the sunlight water-voles at play
Dived under a trailing crimson bramble-spray,
And walnuts thudded ripe on soft black mould.

Your soul goes down unto a darker stream
Alone, O friend, yet even in death's deep night
Your eyes may grow accustomed to the dark
And Styx for you may have the ripple and gleam
Of your familiar river, and Charon's bark
Tarry by that old garden of your delight.

--Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, 1916.

To Rupert Brooke

Though we, a happy few,
Indubitably knew
That from the purple came
This poet of pure flame,

The world first saw his light
Flash on an evil night,
And heard his song from far
Above the drone of war.

Out of the primal dark
He leapt, like lyric lark,
Singing his aubade strain;
Then fell to earth again.

We garner all he gave,
And on his hero grave,
For love and honour strew,
Rosemary, myrtle, rue.

Son of the Morning, we
Had kept you thankfully;
But yours the asphodel:
Hail, singer, and farewell!

--Eden Phillpotts, from 'Plain Song, 1914-1