The Pilgrims of Hope | Page 7

then in my dream were the poor and the wall of faces wan?
Here and here by my side, shoulder to shoulder of man, Hope in the
simple folk, hope in the hearts of the wise, For the happy life to follow,
or death and the ending of lies, Hope is awake in the faces angerless
now no more, Till the new peace dawn on the world, the fruit of the
people's war.
War in the world abroad a thousand leagues away, While custom's
wheel goes round and day devoureth day. Peace at home!--what peace,
while the rich man's mill is strife, And the poor is the grist that he

grindeth, and life devoureth life?

MOTHER AND SON

Now sleeps the land of houses, and dead night holds the street, And
there thou liest, my baby, and sleepest soft and sweet; My man is away
for awhile, but safe and alone we lie; And none heareth thy breath but
thy mother, and the moon looking down from the sky On the weary
waste of the town, as it looked on the grass-edged road Still warm with
yesterday's sun, when I left my old abode, Hand in hand with my love,
that night of all nights in the year; When the river of love o'erflowed
and drowned all doubt and fear, And we two were alone in the world,
and once, if never again, We knew of the secret of earth and the tale of
its labour and pain.
Lo amidst London I lift thee, and how little and light thou art, And thou
without hope or fear, thou fear and hope of my heart! Lo here thy body
beginning, O son, and thy soul and thy life; But how will it be if thou
livest, and enterest into the strife, And in love we dwell together when
the man is grown in thee, When thy sweet speech I shall hearken, and
yet 'twixt thee and me Shall rise that wall of distance, that round each
one doth grow, And maketh it hard and bitter each other's thought to
know? Now, therefore, while yet thou art little and hast no thought of
thine own, I will tell thee a word of the world, of the hope whence thou
hast grown,
Of the love that once begat thee, of the sorrow that hath made Thy little
heart of hunger, and thy hands on my bosom laid. Then mayst thou
remember hereafter, as whiles when people say All this hath happened
before in the life of another day; So mayst thou dimly remember this
tale of thy mother's voice, As oft in the calm of dawning I have heard
the birds rejoice, As oft I have heard the storm-wind go moaning
through the wood, And I knew that earth was speaking, and the
mother's voice was good.
Now, to thee alone will I tell it that thy mother's body is fair, In the
guise of the country maidens who play with the sun and the air, Who
have stood in the row of the reapers in the August afternoon, Who have
sat by the frozen water in the highday of the moon, When the lights of
the Christmas feasting were dead in the house on the hill, And the wild

geese gone to the salt marsh had left the winter still. Yea, I am fair, my
firstling; if thou couldst but remember me! The hair that thy small hand
clutcheth is a goodly sight to see; I am true, but my face is a snare; soft
and deep are my eyes, And they seem for men's beguiling fulfilled with
the dreams of the wise. Kind are my lips, and they look as though my
soul had learned Deep things I have never heard of. My face and my
hands are burned By the lovely sun of the acres; three months of
London-town And thy birth-bed have bleached them indeed--"But lo,
where the edge of the gown" (So said thy father one day) "parteth the
wrist white as curd From the brown of the hands that I love, bright as
the wing of a bird."
Such is thy mother, O firstling, yet strong as the maidens of old, Whose
spears and whose swords were the warders of homestead, of field and
of fold. Oft were my feet on the highway, often they wearied the grass;
From dusk unto dusk of the summer three times in a week would I pass
To the downs from the house on the river through the waves of the
blossoming corn. Fair then I lay down in the even, and fresh I arose on
the morn, And scarce in the noon was I weary. Ah, son, in the days of
thy strife, If thy soul could harbour a dream