One silver-white and one of scarlet hue,

Storm-hornets humming in the wind of death,

Two aeroplanes were fighting in the blue

Above our town; and if I held my breath,

It was because my youth was in the Red

While in the White an unknown pilot flew—

And that the White had risen overhead.

From time to time the crackle of a gun

Far into flawless ether faintly railed,

And now, mosquito-thin, into the Sun,

And now like mating dragonflies they sailed:

And, when like eagles near the earth they drove,

The Red, still losing what the White had won,

The harder for each lost advantage strove.

So lovely lay the land—the towers and trees

Taking the seaward counsel of the stream:

The city seemed, above the far-off seas,

The crest and turret of a Jacob’s dream,

And those two gun-birds in their frantic spire

At death-grips for its ultimate regime—

Less to be whirled by anger than desire.

Till (Glory!) from his chrysalis of steel

The Red flung wide the fatal fans of fire:

I saw the long flames, ribboning, unreel,

And slow bitumen trawling from his pyre.

I knew the ecstasy, the fearful throes,

And the white phœnix from his scarlet sire,

As silver in the Solitude he rose.

The towers and trees were lifted hymns of praise,

The city was a prayer, the land a nun:

The noonday azure strumming all its rays

Sang that a famous battle had been won,

As signing his white Cross, the very Sun,

The Solar Christ and captain of my days

Zoomed to the zenith; and his will was done.