IN TIME OF WAR

To-night o'er Bagshot heath the purple heather

Rolls like dumb thunder to the splendid West;

And mighty ragged clouds are massed together

Above the scarred old common's broken breast;

And there are hints of blood between the boulders,

Red glints of fiercer blossom, bright and bold;

And round the shaggy mounds and sullen shoulders

The gorse repays the sun with savage gold.

And now, as in the West the light grows holy,

And all the hollows of the heath grow dim,

Far off, a sulky rumble rolls up slowly

Where guns at practice growl their evening hymn.

And here and there in bare clean yellow spaces

The print of horse-hoofs like an answering cry

Strikes strangely on the sense from lonely places

Where there is nought but empty heath and sky.

The print of warlike hoofs, where now no figure

Of horse or man along the sky's red rim

Breaks on the low horizon's rough black rigour

To make the gorgeous waste less wild and grim;

Strangely the hoof-prints strike, a Crusoe's wonder,

Framed with sharp furze amongst the footless fells,

A menace and a mystery, rapt asunder,

As if the whole wide world contained nought else,—

Nought but the grand despair of desolation

Between us and that wild, how far, how near,

Where, clothed with thunder, nation grapples nation,

And Slaughter grips the clay-cold hand of Fear.