AFTER THE WAR

Last Post sounded

Across the mead

To where he loitered

With absent heed.

Five years before

In the evening there

Had flown that call

To him and his Dear.

“You'll never come back;

Good-bye!” she had said;

“Here I'll be living,

And my Love dead!”

Those closing minims

Had been as shafts darting

Through him and her pressed

In that last parting;

They thrilled him not now,

In the selfsame place

With the selfsame sun

On his war-seamed face.

“Lurks a god's laughter

In this?” he said,

“That I am the living

And she the dead!”