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.

Presently I shall go in.

III

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.

Ford Madox Hueffer

WHAT THE CIVILIAN SAW

Kensington High Street

It is all shiny and black, like bombazine or taffeta, Or the satin of my grandmother's gown, that stood alone It was so thick;

A screen between us and knowledge,

That sometimes, when we are very good, gets on to the placards.

Past the screen of the dark the rain glissades,

Flowing down the straight damp palisades of the dark.

Faces against the screen,

Lamps of living flesh hung out in the storm

That has draped the world in black..

Here by the station an iridescent sheen,

Dazzling, not gay. And news,

Special; oh, "Special"!

What have they let through to us from over there-
For once?

Faces, news, on the screen,

And the hungry crowds weltering in the dark!
Here is the English translation

Of what goes on over there,

There where hangings are not black but red,
And the king of England is lying on the ground.

Violet Hunt Hueffer

WINDS OF MARCH' poems

The bare boughs are alive within,

And the young buds are trembling and curious.

"NEWLY SEEDED"

It's for you, little bird, of course,

This sign is meant;

For you burrowing with your beak,

And shaking up sprays of dust.

Do you not know

How the earth held each yellow shining speck

Close to itself, feeding it, breathing on it;

And from each rain-drop

Picked out the winy pearl

For it to drink?

Hop away, little one; go find you a worm, Which with its sleek body, alive, has rubbed Against wet earth,

Has tasted the sunlight and the warmth;

Or some buzzing one with wings,
Drunk with the sun, whose breath

Blows it up today

And will blow it out tomorrow.

Yesterday afternoon, on a short-cropped lawn,

I saw the feet of the wind which I have read of in books; And it was like the glimpse of a woman's bare feet

Hidden quickly.

OFF

God,

Over our ugly buildings

Why did you bend out

Your beautiful ravishing sky?

Take it off!

Let them jag

The emptiness.

FIRE

You contain more

Than the red and the purple and the orange
Which I see:

If I dared to tear you to shreds with my hands
I would find that you contain also water,
And ice, and even blackish-brown earth,
To make beautiful things with.

KNOWLEDGE

The craving of 'my body has been conquered.

It no longer deceives my thoughts,

Or colors them.

Knowledge purer than flame

Is in me, consuming me.