I, too, saw God through mud—
The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled.
War brought more glory to their eyes than blood,
And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.

Merry it was to laugh there—
Where death becomes absurd and life absurder.
For power was on us as we slashed bones bare
Not to feel sickness or remorse of murder.

I, too, have dropped off fear—
Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon,
And sailed my spirit surging, light and clear
Past the entanglement where hopes lay strewn;

And witnessed exultation—
Faces that used to curse me, scowl for scowl,
Shine and lift up with passion of oblation,
Seraphic for an hour; though they were foul.

I have made fellowships—
Untold of happy lovers in old song.
For love is not the binding of fair lips
With the soft silk of eyes that look and long,

By Joy, whose ribbon slips,—
But wound with war's hard wire whose stakes are strong;
Bound with the bandage of the arm that drips;
Knit in the welding of the rifle-thong.

I have perceived much beauty
In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight;
Heard music in the silentness of duty;
Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate.

Nevertheless, except you share
With them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell,
Whose world is but the trembling of a flare,
And heaven but as the highway for a shell,

You shall not hear their mirth:
You shall not come to think them well content
By any jest of mine.  These men are worth
Your tears:  You are not worth their merriment.

Though the day of my destiny's over, 
And the star of my fate hath declined, 
Thy soft heart refused to discover 
The faults which so many could find; 
Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted, 
It shrunk not to share it with me, 
And the love which my spirit hath painted 
It never hath found but in thee. 

Then when nature around me is smiling, 
The last smile which answers to mine, 
I do not believe it beguiling, 
Because it reminds me of thine; 
And when winds are at war with the ocean, 
As the breasts I believed in with me, 
If their billows excite an emotion, 
It is that they bear me from thee. 

Though the rock of my last hope is shiver'd, 
And its fragments are sunk in the wave, 
Though I feel that my soul is deliver'd 
To pain — it shall not be its slave. 
There is many a pang to pursue me: 
They may crush, but they shall not contemn — 
They may torture, but shall not subdue me — 
'T is of thee that I think — not of them. 

Though human, thou didst not deceive me, 
Though woman, thou didst not forsake, 
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me, 
Though slander'd, thou never could'st shake, 
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me, 
Though parted, it was not to fly, 
Though watchful, 't was not to defame me, 
Nor, mute, that the world might belie. 

Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it, 
Nor the war of the many with one — 
If my soul was not fitted to prize it, 
'T was folly not sooner to shun: 
And if dearly that error hath cost me, 
And more than I once could foresee, 
I have found that, whatever it lost me, 
It could not deprive me of thee. 

From the wreck of the past, which hath perish'd, 
Thus much I at least may recall, 
It hath taught me that what I most cherish'd 
Deserved to be dearest of all: 
In the desert a fountain is springing, 
In the wide waste there still is a tree, 
And a bird in the solitude singing, 
Which speaks to my spirit of thee.