Shelley in the Trenches

Impressions are like winds ; you feel their cool
Swift kiss upon the brow, yet know not where
They sprang to birth : so like a pool
Rippled by winds from out their forest lair
My soul was stir'd to life ; its twilight fled ;
There passed across its solitude a dream
That wing'd with supreme ecstasy did seem ;
That gave the kiss of life to long-lost dead.

A lark trill'd in the blue : and suddenly
Upon the wings of his immortal ode
My soul rushed singing to the ether sky
And found in visions, dreams, its real abode—
I fled with Shelley, with the lark afar,
Unto the realms where the eternal are.

May 2nd, 1916.