Return

This was the way that, when the war was over,
we were to pass together. You, it’s lover,
would make me love your land (you said) no less,
its shining levels and their lonliness,
the ready windings of the silent stream,
your boyhood’s playmate, and your childhood’s dream.

The war is over now; and we can pass
this way together. Every blade of grass
is you: you are the ripples on the river;
you are the breeze in which they leap and quiver.

I find you in the evening shadows falling
athwart the fen,  you in the wildfowl calling;
and all the immanent vision cannot save
my thoughts from wandering to your unknown grave.

Hilton Young (Inner Temple), St Ives, 1919.