Arch Alfred McKillen

I would have brought you fire for those nights When you were cold and lonely and in doubt. I would have brought you laughter for your tears And given you new dreams to dream about.

But look away, your eyes are much too bright, And sorrow has lent beauty to your face, And should I cast aside this cloak of years And live forever after in disgrace-- It is an old temptation sprung anew, Yet must not be. Ah, look at me and you shall see I am, my love, as miserable as you!

These are the seeds of the future, The weary, the wretched, the slain. These are the ghosts we shall harvest In wars that shall come again.

These are the fields we have furrowed, The dreams that have fallen apart, And this is the plow of our madness, The fear that has entered the heart.

Oh, how shall we welcome the reaper When autumn shall fill the air, When all the hope of the springtime Is cut with the edge of despair?

Oh, you who go hurrying, worrying by With never a cry or a call, Saw you a lad who was standing here On the crest of the old sea wall?

I saw him last night in the twilight As the long low breakers rolled, And across the bay in the chapel An evening bell was tolled.

And we looked at each other a moment And then from each other we turned, But I read in his eyes of a longing That a merciless world had spurned.

Oh, have you no answer to make me, All you who go hastening past, And though I am late will none tell me Where he was standing last?

Like a whisper I hear from the sea wall, Where the waters are troubled below, A murmur of wavelets complaining, And the fate of the lad I know.

Spin onward, old world, to your ending. The hearts that you break and condemn Will someday rise madly against you, Reversing your judgment of them.

Where the old road meets the new road I stand the guard at morn, Where one comes winding down the hill, The other, through it torn.

October’s friendly fingers dipped In every mellow shade Have touched the leaves on all the trees That stand within the glade.

In distant treetops I behold, As I have seen in clouds, The faces of my heroes Or dead men in their shrouds.

The marching columns pass me by, All sailor lads in blue. And some will wink, and some will smile, The way young fellows do.

And overhead the deepening sky More bright and bluer flows, While one lone fleecy, sheeplike cloud Before the dog-wind goes.

The restless leaves like pounding surf Sound breakers through the trees. I strip of all reality And drown myself in these.

A little while ago that sky was gold, And green that hill, And blue the white-capped sea, And I stood watching through these vines a ship That moved, hull down, beyond, Beneath the point.

I wonder now, before the stars are out And long black clouds have filled the sunset sky, Will I remember this at midnight hour: How much I longed to be aboard that ship!

His ship is on the ocean But the sailor lad’s ashore, And deeply, deeply sleeping, He’ll waken nevermore.

We buried him atop the hill That overlooks the bay, And one there was who walked from there With slower steps away.

And one there is on watch at night Who wears the strangest smile, Because he sees a specter lad And talks with him awhile.

Across the world he comes to me, And far horizons dim, And I await the day when I, Instead, shall go to him.

Then we will sail on all the seas That poets can recite, And stand beside another lad, And watch with him at night.

They shot him as he left the house And stripped him in the snow But still he held the samovar And would not let it go.

Who knows from what fine home he came With afternoons at tea? If I had been that lonely lad, They would have shot at me.

For I’d have run as desperately Behind some log to settle, And sit me down beside my theft, The big, old Russian kettle.

But dead he lies; the snow piles high And winter fills the land, And only spring will move the thing And take it from his hand.

Beside you while you slumbered, lad, My restless heart had lain Through all the hours of the night Aware of love and pain.

Aware of love and morning’s light And eyes that must betray When someday you should look in mine Then ever look away.

I’ll come to where you slumber, lad, If death shall mark me not And say the prayer that now I pray, And thought I had forgot.