To Francis Ledwidge

Beauty’s boy-servant, far in Flanders dead,
There shoots across the sea a shaft of pain
To think you are gone--a memory garlanded
With wilding flowers plucked in an Irish lane.
Your songs were like sweet waters to the throat,
Or tenderness and freshness of young leaves;
Surely the blackbird checks his laughing note,
And for your loss the dripping rainbow grieves.
With Brooke you are gone, with Grenfell, on high ways
Lost to our sense, beyond the chance of wrong;
Singers fall silent in these thunderous days,
But their bright death is radiance and a song.
--God send kind sleep to those clear Irish eyes
That saw the old earth still dewy with surprise!