Book: Songs of a Campaign

• The Retirement Of Mars

  He pauses on his way, and gazing back
  across the desert ways of splintered steel

  14 lines
• Ease. 1914

  The iron is hidden in forgetfulness.
  A smoothness comes to men and lies on lands.

  14 lines
• The Speech Of Flattery

  See how he lies, still mighty in his ease,
  The fields' huge fear, the terrifying saint;

  14 lines
• The Moving Of The Shades

  The black revolving depths have moved and stirred
  with news. their Lord has cried. "Send these, and these."

  14 lines
• The Cry Of Mammon

  The dazzling earth is rich with easy thrones.
  The corn is golden in the golden sun.

  14 lines
• The Advice Of Treachery

  This well-feigned trance, this still and
          stupored sleep

  16 lines
• Murder

  Upon the threshold, red-eyed Murder stands,
  Fresh from his slaughter-house of human meat,

  14 lines
• The Moving Of The Shades

  The black revolving depths have moved and stirred
  with news. their Lord has cried. "Send these, and these."

  14 lines
• The Advice Of Treachery

  This well-feigned trance, this still and
          stupored sleep

  16 lines
• The Last To Leave

  The guns were silent, and the silent hills
  had bowed their grasses to a gentle breeze

  19 lines, 7 comments
• Anzac Cove

  There’s a lonely stretch of hillocks:
  There’s a beach asleep and drear:

  11 lines, 3 comments
• The Jester In The Trench

  "That just reminds me of a yarn," he said;
  And look for the body of Lofty Lane

  10 lines, 1 comment
• The Husband

  Yes, I have slain, and taken moving life
  From bodies. Yea! And laughed upon the taking;

  14 lines, 2 comments
• Ease. 1914

  The iron is hidden in forgetfulness.
  A smoothness comes to men and lies on lands.

  14 lines
• The Cry Of Mammon

  The dazzling earth is rich with easy thrones.
  The corn is golden in the golden sun.

  14 lines
• The Speech Of Flattery

  See how he lies, still mighty in his ease,
  The fields' huge fear, the terrifying saint;

  14 lines
• Murder

  Upon the threshold, red-eyed Murder stands,
  Fresh from his slaughter-house of human meat,

  14 lines
• A Song

  The night has come,, I feel the desert dew,
  I lie in Afric's sands

  10 lines
• 'If You Were Here'

  If you were here
  these long grey fields of space

  9 lines
• Armageddon

  The world rolls wet with blood,
  and the skinny hand of Death

  12 lines
• Through A Porthole

  If you could lie upon this berth, this berth
        whereon I lie,

  14 lines
• The Three Concerned

  He lies forgotten 'neath the watching skies,
  the blood upon his bayonet scarlet bright;

  15 lines, 2 comments
• Red

  Place that bayonet in my hand,
  And fill this pouch with lead;

  21 lines
• Before Action

  We always had to do our work at night.
  I wondered why we had to be so sly.

  14 lines
• The Grey World

  Grey nights in the wind,
  And the grey-faced dead.

  12 lines
• In The Trench

  Every night I sleep,
  And every night I dream

  14 lines, 1 comment
• War!

  When my poor body died,--Alas!
  I watched it topple down a hill

  10 lines, 2 comments
• The Brothers

  Do you remember how we crept
  Across out bedroom to our bed,

  12 lines
• The Cross

  "I wear a cross of bronze," he said,
  "and men have told me I was brave."

  12 lines
• The Bush Lover

  He lingers in the lazy grass
  And talks of loneliness with trees,

  9 lines
• The River

  Swift with the dawn she rises, quick and cold,
  Rattling the pebbles with her silver shoon,

  9 lines, 3 comments
• The Influence Of Lust

  With padded feet from out his own dark den
  Comes smiling Lust, once fair and hard to

  15 lines
• The Coming Of War

  Strong from the hills it comes, and flowing
    rivers;

  16 lines
• The Trumpets Of Heaven

  A silver cry is calling from a height
  Leaving the awful pause that follows song,

  14 lines
• The Invocation Of Jealousy

  The conquered world is bowed and worshipful,
  And lovely Peace smooth-gowned in lightest grey

  14 lines
• The Riddle Of The Sphinx

  Thou gazing face above the shifting sands!
  Oh, turn thy tearless eyes and answer me!

  14 lines
• A Military Camp in Egypt

  The moving hours move slowly by the palms.
  The lazy Nile laps softly as it flows.

  15 lines
• The Song’s End

  Where will the song end? Here?
  Here by the stretching arc

  20 lines
• Dreamlight

  Oh, I am lonely by a desert palm,
  And dreaming, dreaming on the sands of thought

  28 lines
• The Old and the New

  Mars! Mars!
  Thy clashing sword was keen

  17 lines
• Dreams of France

  Oh, dreams of France! Oh, faded dreams of France!
  Ohm France, that I had ever dreamed of thee!

  13 lines
• Again the Clash is East

  Again the clash is East, the Gates are barred.
  The rolling echoes of of Troy arise

  14 lines
• Now ‘Neath the Cool Stars

  Now ‘neath the cool stars
  I know thee more.

  18 lines
• The Death

  I’m hit. It’s come at last, I feel a smart
  Of needles in ……My God …. I’m hit again!

  14 lines
• The Burial: In Memory of W.L.E.

  What task is this that so unnerves me now?
  When pity should be dead, and has been dead.

  14 lines
• A Night Attack

  Be still. The bleeding night is in suspense
  Of watchful agony and coloured thought,

  14 lines
• One who Died: In Memory of E.W.T.S.

  I mind they told me on a noisy hill
  I sat and disbelieved, and shook my head:

  13 lines
• The Soldier

  Here in the noisy night
  Is his delight.

  23 lines
• These Men

  Men moving in a trench, in the clear noon,
  Whetting their steel within the crumbling earth;

  12 lines
• The Veteran

  Here must I sit and stare,
  Withered and wrinkled;

  16 lines
• The Teacher

  A  Cross is slanting ‘tween two withered trees -
  I saw him first in peace, amid a crowd

  15 lines
• The Diggers

  The diggers are digging, and digging deep,
  They’re digging and singing,

  20 lines
• Goodbye

  Waft on, thou upward breeze
  From the warm south!

  18 lines
• Sights

  I saw a singer singing to a crowd,-
  Singing of laughing life,- and all the while

  13 lines
• The Attack at Dawn

  ‘At every cost,’ they said, ‘it must be done.’
  They told us in the early afternoon.

  15 lines
• To a Man who Wished to Die

  And now that you are dead, - If I should die
  Upon this ground,

  19 lines
• Poppies

  Some scarlet poppies lay upon our right.
  He watched them through his periscope all day.

  14 lines
• Patience

  Red! Red! Red!
  Is there no black?

  22 lines
• The Dead

  These there were, who lost their everything.
  Gave all! And left the earth a vaster sphere

  15 lines
• The Blind Man

  Within a corner of this windowed room
  He sits, and seldom speaks, and seldom

  15 lines
• The Cripple

  He totters round and dangles those odd shapes
  That were his legs. His eyes are never dim.

  14 lines
• A Book of Wordsworth

  Thy talks on God, and glories of His fields
  Are woven into my unworthy past.

  13 lines
• Blind!

  A red-roofed house is shining to the skies;
  A house red-roofed and brilliant in  the wind:

  13 lines
• The Dreamer

  He lay within a neat white-sheeted bed,
  And stared at distance with his wide young eyes:-

  10 lines
• The Consumptive

  The stars, the fields, will know him never-
                    more;

  15 lines
• The Epileptic

  His splendid heart is set within a frame
  Of manly massiveness, and giant limbs.

  13 lines
• Memory

  The tangled twilight of your hair
  Blew soft against my face,

  16 lines
• Cold!

  Come not to me with loveliness
  Across the crying hill;

  14 lines
• Lemnos Harbour

  The island sleeps,-but it has no delight
  For em, to whom that sleep has been unkind.

  47 lines
• Lemnos Visited

  Oh Peace! The Peace I knew. I thought thee dead!
  And had not hoped again to see thy smile.

  13 lines
• Lemnos Revisited

  Lemnos! Lemnos! Thine enfolding arms
  Have held too much, they patterned hills are over shorn

  13 lines
• The Wrecked Aeroplane

  Unhappy craft of Daedalus reborn,
  That liest prone with white wings torn,

  41 lines
• Fever!

  Everything seems lost and gone.
  The world seems void; and I alone

  70 lines
• The House Delirious

  Come in and tread thou quietly
  Within the duskiness.

  150 lines
• The Return

  I have come home again!
  Dawn is a dream to me

  30 lines
• Memories

  I see wild waves that break, and breaking-run;
  And the wild sea-birds wheeling round the ships;

  14 lines
• Mockery

  I met my love a-weeping,
  Weeping in the night-tide pale;

  30 lines
• Dejection

  Point thy battered prow to the dark shore
  Thou hoary son of Erebus, and dip thy blades

  30 lines
• Acceptance

  Beside the doors of a keen-lighted hall
  I paused, and quite by chance

  19 lines
• The True Dawn

  Go, false dawn, that cometh as a child
  With yellow curls!

  32 lines
• The Soul Forsaken

  Head-bowed I stood before the Gates of
  God,

  39 lines
• Rapine

  She came from some still mossiness
  Of quiet ways; and stood with modest hands;

  14 lines
• Lost!

  A moon upon a moonlit sea
  To me thou art;

  22 lines
• The Hawk

  Swoop! Swoop!
  From dizzy skies thou singest

  42 lines
• The Change

  Last year I heard the songs of birds,
  And heard the trumpets of the bees.

  23 lines

• By me, right now

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