The Return

I heard the rumbling guns. I saw the smoke,
The unintelligible shock of hosts that still,
Far off, unseeing, strove and strove again:
And Beauty flying naked down the hill.

From morn to eve: and then stern night cried Peace!
And shut the strife in darkness; all was still.
Then slowly crept a triumph on the dark--
And I heard Beauty singing up the hill.

John Frederick Freeman

John Frederick Freeman was a British poet, notable as a Georgian poet. He was born in London and worked initially as an office boy and later as a clerk before gaining recognition for his poetic works. Freeman primarily wrote about nature, identity, and the human condition. Over the course of his literary career, he published several books of poetry, and his works were praised for their sincerity and technical excellence. His notable collections include 'Presage of Victory' and 'Stone Trees.'

John Frederick Freeman

The Bright Rider

John Frederick Freeman, Simple Poetry

Lambourn Town

John Frederick Freeman, Simple Poetry

Ten O'Clock No More [1]

John Frederick Freeman, Simple Poetry

The Shock

John Frederick Freeman, Simple Poetry

English

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The War After The War

I.
Yonder, with eyes that tears, not distance, dim,
With ears the wide worlds thickness cannot daunt,
We see tumultuous miseries that haunt
The nights dead watches, hear the battle hymn
Of ruin shrieking through the music grim,
Where the red spectre straddles, long and gaunt,
Spitting across the seas his hideous taunt
At those who nurse at home the unwounded limb.

What shall we say, who, drawing indolent breath,
Mark the quick pant of those who, full of hate,
Drive home the steel or loose the shrieking shell,
Heroes or Huns, who smite the grin of death
And laugh or curse beneath the blows of fate,
Swept madly to the thudding heart of hell?



II.
O peace, be still! Let no drear whirlwind sweep
Our souls about the vault, that groans ...

John Le Gay Brereton

Happy Death

Bugle and battle-cry are still,
The long strife's over;
Low o'er the corpse-encumbered hill
The sad stars hover.

It is in vain, O stars! you look
On these forsaken:
Awhile with blows on blows they shook,
Or struck unshaken.

Needs now no pity of God or man ...
Tears for the living!
They have 'scaped the confines of life's plan
That holds us grieving.

The unperturbed soft moon, the stars,
The breeze that lingers,
Wake not to ineffectual wars
Their hearts and fingers.

Warriors o'ercoming and o'ercome,
Alike contented,
Have marched now to the last far drum,
Praised, unlamented.

Bugle and battle-cry are still,
The long strife's over;
Oh, that with them I had fought my fill
And found like cover!

John Frederick Freeman

Talk

So many were there talking that I heard
Nothing at first quite plain, as I sat down;
Until from this man's gibe and that keen word,
Another's chilly smile or peevish frown,
I caught their talk--but added none of mine.
They said how she still fumbled with her fate,
How she had banished visitants divine,
How long her sleep had been, her sloth how great,
How others had drawn near and passed her by,
While she luxuriously had dreamed, dreamed on,
She, she her own eternal enemy,
And wanting brain, brain, brain would be undone.
The glasses tinkled as they talked and laughed,
And if the door a moment hung ajar
The noises of the street, remotely soft,
Crept in as from a world sunken afar.
And still they talked, and then well pleased were pleased
To talk of other t...

John Frederick Freeman

The Winds

In these green fields, in this green spring,
In this green world of burning sweet
That drives its sour from everything
And burns the Arctic with new heat,
That seems so slow and flies so fleet
On half-seen wing;

In this green world the birds are all
With motion mad, are wild with song;
The grass leaps like a sudden wall
Flung up against a foe that long
Strode round and wrought his frosty wrong.
The bright winds call,

The bright winds answer; the clouds rise
White from the grave, shaking their head,
Strewing the grave-clothes through the skies,
In languid drifting shadow shed
Upon the fields where, slowly spread,
Each shadow dies.

In every wood is green and gold,
The unbridged river runs all green
With queenly swan-clouds f...

John Frederick Freeman

Nightfall

I


Eve goes slowly
Dancing lightly
Clad with shadow up the hills;
Birds their singing
Cease at last, and silence
Falling like fine rain the valley fills.

Not a bat's cry
Stirs the stillness
Perfect as broad water sleeping,
Not a moth's wings
Flit in the gathering darkness,
Not a mouselike moonray ev'n comes creeping.

Then a light shines
From the casement,
Wreathed with jasmine boughs and stars,
Palely golden
As the late eve's primrose,
Glimmers through green leafy prison bars.



II


Only joy now
Come in silence,
Come before your look's forgot;
Come and hearken
While the lonely shadow
Broadens on the hill and then is not.

Now the hour is,
Here the plac...

John Frederick Freeman

Presage Of Victory

I


Then first I knew, seeing that bent grey head,
How England honours all her thousand dead.
Then first I knew how faith through black grief burns,
Until the ruined heart glows while it yearns
For one that never more returns--
Glows in the spent embers of its pride
For one that careless lived and fearless died.
And then I knew, then first,
How everywhere Hope from her prison had burst--
On every hill, wide dale, soft valley's lap,
In lonely cottage clutch'd between huge downs,
And streets confused with streets in clanging towns--
Like spring from winter's jail pouring her sap
Into the idle wood of last year's trees.
Then first I knew how the vast world-disease
Would die away, and England upon her seas
Shake every scab of sickness; toward new sk...

John Frederick Freeman