Shapes in the mist, it is long since I saw you,
Pale hands and faces, and quiet eyes,
Crowned with a garland the dead years wrought you
Out of remembrance that never dies:
One among you is tall and supple
Good to fight or to love beside,
Only the stain of a deadly quarrel,
Only that and the years divide:
One there is with a face as honest,
Heart as true, as the open sea,
One who never betrayed a comrade—
Death stands now betwixt him and me.
One I loved with a passionate longing
Born of worship and fierce despair,
Dreamed that Heaven were only happy
If at length I should find him there.
Shapes in the mist, ye see me lonely,
Lonely and sad in the dim firelight:
How far now to the last of all battles?
(Listen, the guns are loud to-night!)
Whatever comes, I will strike once surely,
Once because of an ancient tryst,
Once for love of your dear dead faces
Ere I come unto you, Shapes in the mist.