To E. T. | |
by Robert Frost | |
I SLUMBERED with your poems on my breast | |
Spread open as I dropped them half-read through | |
Like dove wings on a figure on a tomb | |
To see, if in a dream they brought of you, | |
5 |
I might not have the chance I missed in life |
Through some delay, and call you to your face | |
First soldier, and then poet, and then both, | |
Who died a soldier-poet of your race. | |
I meant, you meant, that nothing should remain | |
10 |
Unsaid between us, brother, and this remained — |
And one thing more that was not then to say: | |
The Victory for what it lost and gained. | |
You went to meet the shell's embrace of fire | |
On Vimy Ridge; and when you fell that day | |
15 |
The war seemed over more for you than me, |
But now for me than you — the other way. | |
How over, though, for even me who knew | |
The foe thrust back unsafe beyond the Rhine, | |
If I was not to speak of it to you | |
20 |
And see you pleased once more with words of mine? |
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From the Perscribo.com online eBook: New Hampshire by Robert Frost BACK TO TOP |
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Transcribed and formatted for Internet reading, with addition of line numbers and edits to footnotes, from the 1923 (Henry Holt and Company) hardcover edition of New Hampshire by Robert Frost.