Gurney Poetry again

I've finally gotten around to digging out the text of the Ivor Gurney poem that I'm setting. It is one of four in fact, but this one seems to have the most profound homo-erotic context.

TO HIS LOVE

He's gone, and all our plans
Are useless indeed.
We'll walk no more on Cotswolds
Where the sheep feed
Quietly and take no heed.
His body that was so quick
Is not as you
Knew it, on Severn River
Under the blue
Driving our small boat through.
You would not know him now…
But still he died
Nobly, so cover him over
With violets of pride
Purple from Severn side.
Cover him, cover him soon!
And with thick-set
Masses of memoried flowers-
Hide that red wet
Thing I must somehow forget.


The poem was evidently written in 1917 but it deals with the death of a comrade in a remarkably lover like way