And any moment may descend hot death To shatter limbs! pulp, tear, blast Beloved soldiers who love rough life and breath Not less for dying faithful to the last.
O the fading eyes, the grimed face turned bony, Oped mouth gushing, fallen head, Lessening pressure of a hand shrunk, clammed, and stony! O sudden spasm, release of the dead!
Was there love once? I have forgotten her. Was there grief once? grief yet is mine. O loved, living, dying, heroic soldier, All, all, my joy, my grief, my love, are thine!
He lay, and those who watched him were amazed To see unheralded beneath the lids Twin tears, new gathered at the price of pain, Start and at once run crookedly athwart Cheeks channelled long by pain, never by tears. So desolate too the sigh next uttered They had wept also, but his great lips moved, And bending down one heard, '_A sprig of lime; Bring me a sprig of lime._' Whereat she stole With dumb signs forth to pluck the thing he craved.
So lay he till a lime-twig had been snapped From some still branch that swept the outer grass Far from the silver pillar of the hole Which mounting past the house's crusted roof Split into massy limbs, crossed boughs, a maze Of close-compacted intercontorted staffs Bowered in foliage wherethrough the sun Shot sudden showers of light or crystal spars Or wavered in a green and vitreous flood.
And all the while in faint and fainter tones Scarce audible on deepened evening's hush He framed his curious and last request, For '_lime, a sprig of lime._' Her trembling hand Closed his loose fingers on the awkward stem Covered above with gentle heart-shaped leaves And under dangling, pale as honey-wax, Square clusters of sweet-scented starry flowers.
She laid his bent arm back upon his breast, Then watched above white knuckles clenched in prayer. He never moved. Only at last his eyes Opened, then brightened in such avid gaze She feared the coma mastered him again ... But no; strange sobs rose chuckling in his throat, A stranger ecstasy suffused the flesh Of that just mask so sun-dried, gouged and old Which few--too few!--had loved, too many feared. 'Father,' she cried; 'Father!' He did not hear.
She knelt and kneeling drank the scent of limes, Blown round the slow blind by a vesperal gust, Till the room swam. So the lime incense blew Into her life as once it had in his, Though how and when and with what ageless charge Of sorrow and deep joy how could she know?