Hédauville - Roland Leighton

The sunshine on the long white road
That ribboned down the hill,
The velvet clematis that clung
Around your window-sill
Are waiting for you still.

Again the shadowed pool shall break
In dimples at your feet,
And when the thrush sings in your wood,
Unknowing you may meet
Another stranger, Sweet.

And if he is not quite so old
As the boy you used to know,
And less proud, too, and worthier,
You may not let him go---
(And daisies are truer than passion-flowers)
It will be better so.

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Roland Leighton (1895 - 1915) England
“Hédauville,” by Leighton, Roland (1895-1915). First World War Poetry Digital Archive, accessed January 7, 2016, http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/collections/item/4063
Wriiten to Vera Brittain, his fiance, shortly before he died of wounds in the Casualty Clearing Station at Louvencourt, France, having been shot through the stomach by a sniper while inspecting wire in the trenches at Hébuterne