| Robert Frost (1874–1963). Miscellaneous Poems to 1920. 1920. |
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| 13. To E.T. |
| | | (From The Yale Review, April 1920.) |
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| 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, | |
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| I might not have the chance I missed in life | 5 |
| Through some delay, and call you to your face | |
| First soldier, and then poet, and then both, | |
| Who died a soldier-poet of your race. | |
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| I meant, you meant, that nothing should remain | |
| Unsaid between us, brother, and this remained— | 10 |
| And one thing more that was not then to say: | |
| The Victory for what it lost and gained. | |
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| You went to meet the shell’s embrace of fire | |
| On Vimy Ridge; and when you fell that day | |
| The war seemed over more for you than me, | 15 |
| But now for me than you—the other way. | |
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| 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 | |
| And see you please once more with words of mine? | 20 |
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