I The seven white peacocks against the castle wall In the high trees and the dusk are like tapestry, The sky being orange, the high wall a purple barrier The canal, dead silver in the dusk And you are far away. Yet I can see infinite miles of mountains. Little lights shinig in rose in the dark of them; Infinite miles of marshes. Thin wisps of must, shimmering like blue webs Over the dusk of them, great curves and horns of seas And dusk and dusk and the little village And you, sitting in the firelight. II Around me are the two hundred and forty men of B Company Mud-coloured. Going about their avocations, Resting between their practice of the art Of killing men, As I too rest between y practice If the Art of killing men. Their pipes glow above the mud and their mud colour, moving like fireflies beneath the trees, I too being mud-coloured Beneath the trees and the peacocks. When they come up to me in the duck They start, stiffen and salute, almost invisibly. And the forty-two prisoners from the Battalion guardroom Crouch over the tea cans in the shadow of the wall. And the breat hunks glimmer, beneath the peacocks, And you are far away. III Presently I shall go in, I shall write down the names of the forty-two Prisoners in the Battalion guardroom On fair white foolscap. their names, rank, and regimental numbers, Corps, Companies, Punishments and Offences, Remarks, and by whom Confined. Yet in spite of all I shall see only The infinite miles of dark marshland, Great curves and horns of sea The little village. And you, Sitting in the firelight. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE SHEPHERDESS by ALICE MEYNELL THE RUBAIYAT, 1879 EDITION: 17 by OMAR KHAYYAM AMONG THE REDWOODS by EDWARD ROWLAND SILL TO SHELLEY by JOHN BANISTER TABB TO TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE by WILLIAM WORDSWORTH FABLE; ROME, 1875 by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH PALINODE by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH PEARLS OF THE FAITH: 44. ALLAH-AL-RAKIB by EDWIN ARNOLD FINDING CYNTHIA IN PAIN, AND CRYING; A SONNET by PHILIP AYRES |