Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ROMANCE, by NEIL MUNRO


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ROMANCE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Old orchard crofts of picardy
Last Line: "when we three march again!"
Subject(s): World War I; First World War


OLD orchard crofts of Picardy,
In the high warm winds of May,
Tossed into blossomed billowings,
And spattered the roads with spray.
Over the earth the scudding cloud,
And the laverock whistling high,
Lifted the drooping heart of the lad
At one bound to the sky.
France! France! and the old romance
Came over him like a spell;
Homesickness and his weariness
Shook from him then and fell;
For he was again with d'Artagnan;
With Alan Breck and d'Artagnan;
And the pipes before him gleefully
Were playing airs of Pan.

Through dust that in a mist uprose
From under the tramping feet,
He saw old storied places, dim
In the haze of the summer heat.
Menace and ambush, wounds and death,
Lurked in the ditch and wood,
But he, high-breasted, walked in joy
With a glorious multitude;
Great hearts that never perish,
Nor grow old with the aches of Time,
Marched through the morning with him,
All in a magic clime;
But loved of all was d'Artagnan,
And Alan the kith of kings,
Fond comrades of his childhood's days,
Still on their wanderings.

From miry clefts of the wintry plain
He leapt with his platoon,
The morion on his forehead,
And the soul of him at noon;
With head high to the hurricane
He walked, and in his breast
He knew himself immortal,
And that death was but a jest.
A smile was on his visage
When they found him where he fell,
The gallant old companions,
In an amaranthine dell.
"Lad o' my heart!" cried Alan Breck,
"Well done thy first campaign!"
"Sleep thou till morn," said d'Artagnan,
"When we three march again!"





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