Requiescant

In lonely watches night by night Great visions burst upon my sight, For down the stretches of the sky The hosts of dead go marching by. Strange ghostly banners o’er them float, Strange bugles sound an awful note, And all their faces and their eyes Are lit with starlight from the skies. The anguish and the pain have passed And peace hath come to them at last, But in the stern looks linger still The iron purpose and the will. Dear Christ, who reign’st above the flood Of human tears and human blood, A weary road these men have trod, O house them in the home of God! In a Field near Ypres April, 1915