Classic Poem

The bedroom is darkness.
A dim cloud in one direction
Is the window with its curtains;
The leaves of the trees outside rustle on one another.
I fall to sleep.

How long have I slept?
A voice calls, a bell rings;
The clamour and the ringing lengthen;
I turn; it continues;
Not mine the name I hear,
And yet
There is alarm in it that concerns me.

Am I awake?
Over my nightdress
I huddle my clothes;
Thrust my bare feet into slippers;
And run down the stairs.

From a blur of female faces
Distraught eyes stand out,
And a woman's voice cries:
" The Zeppelins — they are attacking us;
Kingsland Road is alight,
Stoke Newington is burning.
Did you not hear the guns?
Oh, what shall we do! "

We make jokes to reassure them.
I shiver: chill? excitement? fear?
Am I awake?
My mind has been washed by sleep and left limp.
The trees in the gardens opposite
Stand out behind the houses,
A dark fretwork against the sky;
And everywhere is stillness.

Yet something slinks overhead through the sky;
Men will say that they saw it pass, and then
A flash, a thud, a roar, —
A house has been cleft through three stories, and burns;
And children burn in their beds,
And men are burned rescuing them;
An old man and woman are burned to death
Because the staircase has been smashed away.

But we do not know this yet;
We have only heard explosions,
And have seen the glow of fires in the sky,
Quickly gone.

We climb upstairs to the top story, —
To see!
There is nothing to see ...
But the silence and stillness are sinister.
What has been taken away, what added?
Brick and stone have become unreal,
And only the primeval trees remain,
With the primeval fear behind them and among them ...

What is that behind the trees? —
A flame-coloured circle of light that glows
And grows brighter and dimmer by turns.
Is it an airship on fire?
It burns on, and moves nearer, slowly;
It swings clear of the trees —