Poem by Hilaire Belloc

A Bivouac

  I

  You came without a human sound,
    You came and brought my soul to me;
  I only woke, and all around
  They slumbered on the firelit ground,
    Beside the guns in Burgundy.

  II

  I felt the gesture of your hands,
    You signed my forehead with the Cross;
  The gesture of your holy hands
  Was bounteous--like the misty lands
    Along the Hills in Calvados.

  III

  But when I slept I saw your eyes,
    Hungry as death, and very far.
  I saw demand in your dim eyes
  Mysterious as the moons that rise
    At midnight, in the Pines of Var.

1. The Dromedary
2. Lines to a Don
3. A Trinity
4. The South Country
5. The Tiger

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