The long night, the short sleep, and La Gorgues to wander, <br />So be the Fates were kind and our Commander; <br />With a mill, and still canal, and like-Stroudway bridges. <br />One looks back on these as Time's truest riches — <br />Which were so short an escape, so perilous a joy — <br />Since fatigues, weather, Line trouble, or any whimsical play <br />Division might hatch out would have finished peace. <br />There was a house there — (I tell the noted thing) <br />The kindliest woman kept, and an unending string <br />Of privates as wasps to sugar went in and out. <br />Friendliness sanctified all there beyond doubt, <br />As lovely as the brick mill above the still green <br />Canal where the dark fishes went almost unseen. <br />Gloucester's B. Company had come down from Tilleloy, they <br />Lousy, thirsty, avid of any employ <br />Of peace; and this woman in leanest times had plotted <br />A miracle to amaze the army-witted — the time-cheated. <br />And this was cafe-au-lait as princes know it: <br />And fasting, and poor-struck; dead but not so as to show it, <br />A drink of epics, dooms, battles, a height of tales, <br />Rest, heat, cream, coffee; the maker tries and fails <br />The poet too, where such need such satisfaction had, <br />A campaign thing that makes keen remembrance sad. <br />It was light there, too, in the clear North French way, <br />It blessed the room and bread; and the mistress-giver ... <br />The husband for his wife's sake, both for more than a day <br />Were blessed by many soldiers tired however, and forever <br />A mark in Time, a Peace, a Making-delay. <br />God bless the honourers of boy soldiers and the folk generous <br />Who dwell in light clean houses, and are glad to be thus <br />Serving France with love generous, in the light, clean house.<br /><br />Ivor Gurney<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/la-gorgues/
