Spring Fever Feather

The naked earth is warm with spring,
And with green grass and bursting trees
Leans to the sun's kiss glorying,
And quivers in the sunny breeze;

And life is colour and warmth and light
And a striving evermore for these;
And he is dead, who will not fight;
And who dies fighting has increase.

The fighting man shall from the sun
Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth.
Speed with the light-foot winds to run,
And with the trees to newer birth.

Julian Grenfell
English soldier and poet