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Showing posts from May 28, 2016

Hédauville

The sunshine on the long white road  That ribboned down the hill, The velvet clematis that clung Around your window-sill Are waiting for you still.  Again the shadowed pool shall break  In dimples at your feet, And when the thrush sings in your wood, Unknowing you may meet Another stranger, Sweet.  And if he is not quite so old As the boy you used to know, And less proud, too, and worthier, You may not let him go--- (And daisies are truer than passion-flowers)  It will be better so. Roland Leighton to Vera Brittain

Villanelle

Violets from Plug Street Wood, Sweet, I send you oversea. (It is strange they should be blue, Blue, when his soaked blood was red, For they grew around his head: It is strange they should be blue.) Think what they have meant to me - Life and hope and Love and You (and you did not see them grow Where his mangled body lay Hiding horrors from the day; Sweetest, it was better so.) Violets from oversea, To your dear, far, forgetting land These I send in memory Knowing you will understand. Roland Leighton to Vera Brittain