Classic Poem

While war through Flanders sweeps in flood,
And death goes flaring by,
Above the steam and stench of blood
Spring larks are soaring high;

And in the pause you hear their song,
While underneath, at rest,
Amid those mounds of human wrong
The young lie in the nest.

Down-nodding to the pit of death
The daffodils are through,
And shake their petals full of breath
Above a breathless crew.

Blithely they quaff and cast away
Light from their golden eyes,
Where, blind to all the beams of day,
The new Narcissus lies:

Who, in that dark and dreadful hole
Beheld a vision blest,
Saw the desire of his young soul,
And drank, and there found rest.

Within those eyes, beyond our ken,
Shut fast from present use,
The vision waits. There lie the men
Who kept the Christmas Truce.