Drill
Williams College, April, 1917
One! two, three, four!
One! two, three, four!
One, two!…
It is hard to keep in time
Marching through
The rutted slime
With no drum to play for you.
One! two, three, four!
And the shuffle of five hundred feet
Till the marching line is neat.
Then the wet New England valley
With the purple hills around
Takes us gently, musically,
With a kindly heart and willing,
Thrilling, filling with the sound
Of our drilling.
Battle fields are far away.
All the world about me seems
The fulfillment of my dreams.
God, how good it is to be
Young and glad to-day!
One! two, three, four!
One, two, three!…
Now, as never before,
From the vastness of the sky,
Falls on me the sense of war.
Now, as never before,
Comes the feeling that to die
Is no duty vain and sore.
Something calls and speaks to me:
Cloud and hill and stream and tree;
Something calls and speaks to me,
From the earth, familiarly.
I will rise and I will go,
As the rivers flow to sea,
As the sap mounts up the tree
That the flowers may blow—
God, my God,
All my soul is out of me!
God, my God,
Your world is much too beautiful! I feel
My senses melt and reel,
And my heart aches as if a sudden steel
Had pierced me through and through.
I cannot bear
This vigorous sweetness in your air;
The sunlight smites me heavy blow on blow,
My soul is black and blue
And blind and dizzy. God, my mortal eyes
Cannot resist the onslaught of your skies!
I am no wind, I cannot rise and go
Tearing in madness to the woods and sea;
I am no tree,
I cannot push the earth and lift and grow;
I am no rock
To stand unmovable against this shock.
Behold me now, a too desirous thing,
Passionate lover of your ardent Spring,
Held in her arms too fast, too fiercely pressed
Against her thundering breast
That leaps and crushes me!
One! two, three, four!
One! two, three, four!
One, two, three!…
So it shall be
In Flanders or in France. After a long
Winter of heavy burdens and loud war,
I will forget, as I do now, all things
Except the perfect beauty of the earth.
Strangely familiar, I will hear a song,
As I do now, above the battle roar,
That will set free my pent imaginings
And quiet all surprise.
My body will seem lighter than the air,
Easier to sway than a green stalk of corn;
Heaven shall bend above me in its mirth
With flutter of blue wings;
And singing, singing, as to-day it sings,
The earth will call to me, will call and rise
And take me to its bosom there to bear
My mortal-feeble being to new birth
Upon a world, this world, like me reborn,
Where I shall be
Alive again and young again and glad and free.
One! two, three, four!
One! two, three, four!
One, two, three!…
All the world about me seems
The fulfillment of my dreams.
[signed] Salomon De La Selva.