C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Iolo Aneurin Williams (1890–1962)

(January, 1915)

A YEAR hence may the grass that waves

O’er English men in Flemish graves,

Coating this clay with green of peace

And softness of a year’s increase,

Be kind and lithe as English grass

To bend and nod as the winds pass;

It was for grass on English hills

These bore too soon the last of ills.

And may the wind be brisk and clean,

And singing cheerfully between

The bents a pleasant-burdened song

To cheer these English dead along;

For English songs and English winds

Are they that bred these English minds.

And may the circumstantial trees

Dip, for these dead ones, in the breeze,

And make for them their silver play

Of spangled boughs each shiny day.

Thus may these look above, and see

And hear the wind in grass and tree,

And watch a lark in heaven stand,

And think themselves in their own land.