[Poem] IN MEMORY OF MAJOR ROBERT GREGORY - A heartfelt elegy for a multitalented friend lost in war

(I)
Now that the clouds have settled from the air,
The storms are done, the thunder drifts away,
I count the quiet men I used to share
Old laughter with, or those who soared astray;
Yet no despair can weigh upon my mind,
Although the hush of sorrow grows behind,
For time must claim the bravest and the best,
And memory folds them gently to her breast.
Among those forms, one face stands clear to me—
That parted spirit, Major Robert Gregory.

(II)
An Irish sky bent over fields of green
When first I met the brightness of his gaze;
Tall in the saddle, calm yet quick of mien,
He rode young colts across our country ways.
A mind alert, by nature finely drawn,
A hand that scorned to rest from dusk till dawn,
Where every art he touched found root and bloom—
Such was the man now quiet in the tomb.
From horse and hound to brush and flying plane,
He turned with zest, as though no skill were vain.

(III)
He took the painter’s colours for a while,
And on the canvas caught the fleeting light;
He trod the stage’s boards with modest style,
Yet played his part with keenness and delight.
He soared in thought where music shaped its laws,
In airy war found discipline and cause;
No single boundary checked his roving soul—
He grasped at each new challenge as a whole.
A renaissance of talents, strong and rare,
He left them all to answer battle’s blare.

(IV)
When Europe raged, and ruin flamed the sky,
He joined the ranks that rose to stem the tide;
A call to guard the old world’s chivalry,
He took the pilot’s seat, the clouds his guide.
An Irish airman, quick of heart and hand,
He soared where death had cast its trembling band;
Yet in the tumult of that reckless fight,
He bore our hopes, our prayers, into the night.
Sudden the blow, unlooked for came his fall,
And hushed the fields that heard his funeral call.

(V)
I mourn him not with tears of vain regret,
For sorrow’s weight can dull the living mind;
I shape these lines so we may not forget
The form that left a shining trace behind.
He stood for Ireland’s wit and Ireland’s grace,
For energies that lit his passing days;
Now let no gloom obscure the spirit’s flight—
Such soul as his still claims the cosmic height.
Though mortal loss is bitter in its truth,
We keep his ardor’s flame beyond his youth.

(VI)
Lady Augusta in her towered home,
Who shaped our modern tales from Gaelic seed,
Has lost her son, yet sets her pen to roam
Where ancient ghosts still counsel modern need.
She fosters in our hearts the Gaelic tongue,
Invites the poets old and new among
Her storied halls, that Ireland’s voice may ring
When war and time have done their withering.
There Robert’s memory glimmers in each room,
Like youthful laughter warming winter’s gloom.

(VII)
We read the records of each friend long gone—
One fell to fever, one to raw despair,
Another burned with dreams that led him on,
But this man soared in elemental air.
He risked the lonely hazard overhead,
Where engine’s roar and bullet’s path are wed;
He gave his best unasked, nor bided ease,
So let him roam in endless liberties.
In death’s strange hush his story must remain
A testament of courage spent in vain.

(VIII)
Yet who can say that any life is vain,
If it has lit the hearts of those who mourn?
He took from many fields his varied gain
And gave it forth in friendship lightly worn.
Now I, who speak his name in measured verse,
Would bless that memory death cannot disperse;
May it endure in Ireland’s storied clay—
A gallant soul that never turned away.
Thus stands my prayer: that all who read his tale
Recall a spirit Ireland must not fail.
The storms are done, the clouds are parted wide,
And in his stead the sunbeams gently glide.