to e.t.

i slumbered with your poems on my breast
spread open as i dropped them half-read through

like dove wings on a figure on a tomb
to see, if in a dream they brought of you,

i might not have the chance i missed in life
through some delay, & call you to your face
first soldier, & then poet, & then both,
who died a soldier-poet of your race.

i meant, you meant, that nothing should remain
unsaid between us, brother, & this remained--
& one thing more that was not then to say:
the victory for what it lost & gained.

you went to meet the shell's embrace of fire
on vimy ridge; & when you fell that day

the war seemed over more for you than me,
but now for me than you--the other way.

how over, though, for even me who knew
the foe thrust back unsafe beyond the rhine,
if i was not to speak of it to you
& see you pleased once more with words of mine?

robert frost