I slumbered with your poems on my breast <br />Spread open as I dropped them half-read through <br />Like dove wings on a figure on a tomb <br />To see, if in a dream they brought of you, <br /> <br />I might not have the chance I missed in life <br />Through some delay, and call you to your face <br />First soldier, and then poet, and then both, <br />Who died a soldier-poet of your race. <br /> <br />I meant, you meant, that nothing should remain <br />Unsaid between us, brother, and this remained-- <br />And one thing more that was not then to say: <br />The Victory for what it lost and gained. <br /> <br />You went to meet the shell's embrace of fire <br />On Vimy Ridge; and when you fell that day <br />The war seemed over more for you than me, <br />But now for me than you--the other way. <br /> <br />How over, though, for even me who knew <br />The foe thrust back unsafe beyond the Rhine, <br />If I was not to speak of it to you <br />And see you pleased once more with words of mine?<br /><br />Robert Frost<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-e-t/
