<html xmlns:tei="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0"><body><h1 align="" class="head">Forecast</h1><div class="stanza"><p class="line">IF I should chance to fall, and find</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">A last couch on this soil of France,</p><p class="line">Do not seek out with yearning mind</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">The place, nor give my grave one glance.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">The cross would mark a cenotaph;</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">And careless of the flesh thus laid</p><p class="line">In unfamiliar earth, I'd laugh</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">To know how quickly it decayed.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">My spirit, freed, impatient still</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">At the irrelevant, blind stroke</p><p class="line">That stole the servant of its will</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">With all half-done, with thews unbroke.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Would swiftly reach the land which knew</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">The love that time had not yet staled.</p><p class="line">And haunt the country whence it drew</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">The lii'c tliat has not sped nor failed.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Perhaps beside some lonely copse</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">A brook would flow with less of ease,</p><p class="line">The brooding wind that sways the tops</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Murmur more plaintive in the trees.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">And should you, lingering there alone.</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Feel on your face, some evening</p><p class="line">Its touch, that stranger, rarer grown.</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Clothes some sweet, straining, h'alf-spoke thing;</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Know that the fate self-fixed must yet</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Endure, whether I die or live;</p><p class="line">And I still strive to ease the debt</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Of kisses I was born to give.</p></div><p>France, May, 1917.</p></body></html> · Great War