| George Herbert Clarke, ed. (1873–1953). A Treasury of War Poetry. 1917. |
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| 97. The Beach Road by the Wood |
| | | By Geoffrey Howard |
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| I KNOW a beach road, | |
| A road where I would go, | |
| It runs up northward | |
| From Cooden Bay to Hoe; | |
| And there, in the High Woods, | 5 |
| Daffodils grow. | |
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| And whoever walks along there | |
| Stops short and sees, | |
| By the moist tree-roots | |
| In a clearing of the trees, | 10 |
| Yellow great battalions of them, | |
| Blowing in the breeze. | |
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| While the spring sun brightens, | |
| And the dull sky clears, | |
| They blow their golden trumpets, | 15 |
| Those golden trumpeteers! | |
| They blow their golden trumpets | |
| And they shake their glancing spears. | |
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| And all the rocking beech-trees | |
| Are bright with buds again, | 20 |
| And the green and open spaces | |
| Are greener after rain, | |
| And far to southward one can hear | |
| The sullen, moaning rain. | |
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| Once before I die | 25 |
| I will leave the town behind, | |
| The loud town, the dark town | |
| That cramps and chills the mind, | |
| And I’ll stand again bareheaded there | |
| In the sunlight and the wind. | 30 |
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| Yes, I shall stand | |
| Where as a boy I stood | |
| Above the dykes and levels | |
| In the beach road by the wood, | |
| And I’ll smell again the sea breeze, | 35 |
| Salt and harsh and good. | |
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| And there shall rise to me | |
| From that consecrated ground | |
| The old dreams, the lost dreams | |
| That years and cares have drowned: | 40 |
| Welling up within me | |
| And above me and around | |
| The song that I could never sing | |
| And the face I never found. | |
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