Requiescant

IN lonely watches night by night

Great visions burst upon my sight,

For down the stretches of the sky

The hosts of dead go marching by.

Strange ghostly banners o’er them float,

Strange bugles sound an awful note,

And all their faces and their eyes

Are lit with starlight from the skies.

The anguish and the pain have passed

And peace hath come to them at last,

But in the stern looks linger still

The iron purpose and the will.

Dear Christ, who reign’st above the flood

Of human tears and human blood,

A weary road these men have trod,

O house them in the home of God!
In a Field near Ypres
April, 1915