TO E. T.
20 lines✦
slumbered with your poems on my breastSpread open as I dropped them half-read throughLike dove wings on a figure on a tombTo see, if in a dream they brought of you, I might not have the chance I missed in lifeThrough some delay, and call you to your faceFirst soldier, and then poet, and then both,Who died a soldier-poet of your race. I meant, you meant, that nothing should remainUnsaid between us, brother, and this remained--And one thing more that was not then to say:The Victory for what it lost and gained. You went to meet the shell's embrace of fireOn Vimy Ridge; and when you fell that dayThe war seemed over more for you than me,But now for me than you--the other way. How over, though, for even me who knewThe foe thrust back unsafe beyond the Rhine,If I was not to speak of it to youAnd see you pleased once more with words of mine?
✦