In Time of War I

To-night o'er Bagshot heath the purple heatherRolls like dumb thunder to the splendid West;And mighty ragged clouds are massed togetherAbove 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 shouldersThe 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 slowlyWhere guns at practice growl their evening hymn.

And here and there in bare clean yellow spacesThe print of horse-hoofs like an answering cryStrikes strangely on the sense from lonely placesWhere there is nought but empty heath and sky.

The print of warlike hoofs, where now no figureOf horse or man along the sky's red rimBreaks on the low horizon's rough black rigourTo 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 desolationBetween us and that wild, how far, how near,Where, clothed with thunder, nation grapples nation,And Slaughter grips the clay-cold hand of Fear.