First Known When Lost: Four-Line Poems, Part Seven: "Sighs Nature An Alas? Or Merely, Amen?"

First Known When Lost: Four-Line Poems, Part Seven: "Sighs Nature An Alas? Or Merely, Amen?"
Excerpt:
Harvest Home

A bird flies up from the hayfield;
Sweet, to distraction, is the new-mown grass:
But I grieve for its flowers laid low at noonday --
        And only this poor Alas!

I grieve for War's innocent lost ones --
The broken loves, the mute goodbye,
The dread, the courage, the bitter end,
The shaken faith, the glazing eye.

O bird, from the swathes of that hayfield --
The rancid stench of the grass!
And a heart stricken mute by that Harvest Home --
        And only this poor Alas!

Walter de la Mare, The Burning-Glass and Other Poems (1945).