Richard Elwes

Are you forgotten? Yes, I think you are,
Forgotten with most other lovely things,
Since but a stifled echo, faint and far,
Is all distracted recollection brings.
...

Remembrance of my love, come back to me,
Enfold me in your transient embrace,
Patient of disillusion I will be
Again a visionary of her face.
...

I have been greeted by long absent friends
and loved the starting pleasure in their eyes;
have known the silence as the singer ends,
holding the listeners dumb with ecstasies;
...

God’s pity on you, regimented slaves.
Who work your master’s foulness on the land,
Pollute with treachery the friendly waves
and taint the heavens with murder at
...

I saw the broad, reflective brow that seems
as it were stolen from a philosopher
in sleep, the pushed out upper lip
and sweet red rebel mouth, the tip
...

In a British cemetery
Overseas, May 1940
...

Above you as you lift your lovely head,
Serene and splendid, newly opening rose,
Breathless I stoop and look into the red,
the dimly glowing deep that you disclose.
...

My thoughts go back to your treasury,
Dwelling a little, wistfully content
Among remembered beauties, and I see
All your enchantments, marvellously blent.
...

Softly, O softly now, you falling snow,
Cover the ravished, the unyielding breast,
You that had earlier brought the monster low,
Irresolute and shrinking with the rest.
...

You that have lately taught my spirit ease,
dissolving and releasing all the pain,
you sweetly falling, dying cadences,
sweet falling verse, I turn to you again.
...

The melting waters move and flow again,
and Life's awakening pulse is everywhere,
responsive, stirring in the souls of men.
And Spring's heroic song is in the air,
...

We had been winter-bound these later years,
Starved in the frozen wasting of the soul,
That faltered, losing hold in doubts and fears
On that for which our brothers paid the toll,
...

Tonight again-
Tonight I saw you as you peered
Over the shoulder of the clucking hen,
Who faced me at the table, saw that
...

My God, I thank Thee that my course is set,
with others of thy choosing, at this hour;
to see the right discerned, the challenge met,
and battle given to the evil power;
...

And after-
the laughing done, there follows in its place,
gentle and soft and warm,
a rippling, sunlit calm;
...

Within her room my heart's
enchantment lies
White against red
and gold embroidered damask on her bed.
...

At last I look across the wold
and take my fill of Dale and Glen,
where copse and spinney, field and fold
are fettled by the Yorkshiremen,
...

These faithful verses play a double part,
For when the long frustration has relented,
They are the springs that well up in my heart
And flow at last and leave me then contented.
...

I have no conflict with mortality.
Defiance of the unrelenting years,
That drains away so many pagan tears,
Engenders no rebellious pang in me.
...