Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. IV. The Nineteenth Century: Wordsworth to Rossetti

Sydney Dobell (1824–1874)

Sonnets: The Common Grave

LAST night beneath the foreign stars I stood,

And saw the thoughts of those at home go by

To the great grave upon the hill of blood.

Upon the darkness they went visibly,

Each in the vesture of its own distress.

Among them there came One, frail as a sigh,

And like a creature of the wilderness

Dug with her bleeding hands. She neither cried

Nor wept; nor did she see the many stark

And dead that lay unburied at her side.

All night she toiled; and at that time of dawn,

When Day and Night do change their More and Less,

And Day is More, I saw the melting Dark

Stir to the last, and knew she laboured on.