Leon Gellert - The Consumptive

The stars, the fields, will know him never-
more;
his friends, his trees, the restless swerving sea.
‘Three days to live,’ they said – the kind gave four.
They glide about his bed silently.
‘Twas not the lead of battle nor the shell
the spitting of Maxim’s basiliskine breath –
‘Twas through the falseness of the winds he fell;
the snow’s mock-warmth – a chill. His humble
death
will ne’er be sung in elegy and rhyme,
his passage bloodless was, unstained and still.
It brought no stir; and smiling all the time
He waved his last farewell behind the Hill.
I saw him die with my half-closed eyes,
And closing them I thought of Paradise.

Leon Gellert

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