VI

Then first I knew the joy that yet should be

Ringing from camped hill and guarded sea

With England's victory.

The dust had stirred, the infinite dust had stirred,

It was the courage of the past I heard,

The virtue of those buried bones again

Animate in these marching Englishmen;

And nothing wanted if the dead but nerved

The living hands that the same England served.

With new-washed eyes I saw as I went down

On the hill crest the oak-grove's crown,

With new delighted ear heard the lark sing —

That mad delighted thing;

The very smoke that rose was strangely blue,

But most the orchard brightened wonderfully new,

Where the wild spring, ere winter snow well gone,

Scattered her whiter, briefer snow-cloud down.

And England lovelier looked than when

Her dead roused not her living men.