In Hospital by Edith Nesbit

UNDER the shadow of a hawthorn brake, / Where bluebells draw the sky down to the wood, / Where, 'mid brown leaves, the primroses awake / And hidden violets smell of solitude; / Beneath green leaves bright-fluttered by the wing / Of fleeting, beautiful, immortal Spring, / I should have said, "I love you," and your eyes / Have said, "I, too. " The gods saw otherwise.

For this is winter, and the London streets / Are full of soldiers from that far, fierce fray / Where life knows death, and where poor glory meets / Full-face with shame, and weeps and turns away.

And in the broken, trampled foreign wood / Is horror, and the terrible scent of blood, / And love shines tremulous, like a drowning star, / Under the shadow of the wings of war.

1916.