Poems

Conscious

     His fingers wake, and flutter up the bed.
     His eyes come open with a pull of will,
     Helped by the yellow may-flowers by his head.
     A blind-cord drawls across the window-sill . . .
     How smooth the floor of the ward is! what a rug!
     And who's that talking, somewhere out of sight?
     Why are they laughing?  What's inside that jug?
     "Nurse!  Doctor!"  "Yes; all right, all right."

     But sudden dusk bewilders all the air—
     There seems no time to want a drink of water.
     Nurse looks so far away.  And everywhere
     Music and roses burnt through crimson slaughter.
     Cold; cold; he's cold; and yet so hot:
     And there's no light to see the voices by—
     No time to dream, and ask—he knows not what.