Ford Madox Hueffer

A Winter Landscape
To Mrs. Percy Jackson

I

THE SEVEN white peacocks against the castle wall

In the high trees and the dusk are like tapestry;

The sky being orange, the high wall a purple barrier,

The canal dead silver in the dusk:

And you are far away.

Yet I see infinite miles of mountains,

Little lights shining in rows in the dark of them—

Infinite miles of marshes;

Thin wisps of mist, shimmering like blue webs

Over the dusk of them.

Great curves and horns of sea,

And dusk and dusk, and the little village;

And you, sitting in the firelight.

Around me are the two hundred and forty men of B Company,

Mud-colored;

Going about their avocations,

Resting between their practice of the art

Of killing men;

As I too rest between my practice

Of the art of killing men.

Their pipes glow over the mud and their mud-color, moving like fireflies beneath the trees—

I too being mud-colored—

Beneath the trees and the peacocks.

When they come up to me in the dusk

They start, stiffen and salute, almost invisibly.

And the forty-two prisoners from the battalion guard-room

Crouch over the tea-cans in the shadow of the wall.

And the bread hunks glimmer, beneath the peacocks—

And you are far away.

III

Presently I shall go in.

I shall write down the names of the forty-two

Prisoners in the battalion guard-room

On fair white foolscap:

Their names, rank and regimental numbers;

Corps, Companies, Punishments and Offences,

Remarks, and By whom confined.

Yet in spite of all I shall see only

The infinite miles of dark mountain,

The infinite miles of dark marshland,

Great curves and horns of sea,

The little village;

And you,

Sitting in the firelight.