The Village Wifes Lament | Page 7

he take his son!
Too long, too short the days to wait,
To plan and think and dread;

And happy we whose poor estate
Claims our work for our bread.

Each day I went to scour and scrub
As my mother us'd,
Or stood
before the washing-tub
Where the linen sluiced.
And so my love with careful hand
And careful eye
Led his white
flock about the land;
And I must sigh,
"There's no rebelling in a
poor man's dwelling,
The roof stoops to the blast;
And no
heart-swelling meets God's compelling,
And what is cast is cast!"
viii
But as the tide crawls to his full
Without your knowing,
Invading
rock and filling pool,
Endlessly flowing;
Lo, while you sit and look
at it,
Idle, little thinking,
The flood is brimming at your feet,

Lipping there and winking--
The very same the Great War grew;
Like a flowing tide
It spread its
channels thro' and thro'
The quiet countryside.
One day you'd stop:

a poster up,
And Lord, how it glared!
The next there'd be a very
crop,
And not a body stared.
And then the lorries flung along
By ones and twos, and then
In
snaky line some twenty strong,
Full of shouting men.
They made
me blench with noise and stench,
But more, I do believe,
To know
them gaining inch by inch
The earth whereby we live.
So faded fast the painted past
Beneath the mist of war;
One could
not think life had been cast
In sweet lines before.
There was no list
in that red mist
For love or wholesome breath,
But making rage our
staple grist
We ground the dust of death.
Our men held talk among themselves,
But said little to we;
And
soon they went by tens and twelves
Soldiers to be.
I knew how
'twould be from the first,
I think my heart could tell;
I loved a man
who never durst
Not do well.
ix
How young, how gay they marcht away,
All our village boys!

Leaving us women here to pray,
Drowning with their noise

Misdoubt and eager mother-love,
Hungry on the watch,
As if they
went to race and shove
In a football match.
But my love chose in soberness
Another way, his own;
And God I
bless that my distress
Came suddenly down.
A swift November
night was falling
In a windless air;
I heard him indoors, heard him
calling,
And went, and he was there.
x
He stood still, and his gaze
Was far off, and slow

And quiet the
words he says:
"Nancy, I must go."

In my still heart's deep
I gloried in the trust
He handed me to keep,

In his quiet "I must."
No more we said that night,
But sat in the gloom;
We sat without
candle-light
In our little room.
Handfast, like girl and boy,
There we sat on,
Hoarding our store of
joy
Against he were gone.
Handfast, like boy and girl,
And my eyes they did fill;
But my heart
was in a whirl
To have him there still.
'Twas when we were abed,
And I against his heart,
That I knew the
great dread
It would be to part.
Old sayings, that sounded new,
Sweet, every broken word--
"My
Nancy, sweet and true,
My pretty wild bird!"
I let him kiss me, but I
Lay quite still in his arm:
If I had started to
cry
God only knew the harm!
And if he thought me cool
'Twould make an easier going;
But _if_
he thought me cool
'Twas not for want of knowing.
Towards the twilight gray
When my love was sleeping,
I sat upright
to pray,
And heard the sparrows cheeping.
It was their fond love-twitter
That broke my prayer down,
Turn'd all
my faith bitter,
To set it by their own.
Their love-life to begin,
And mine now--where?
Their nest to win,

Mine soon to be bare!
I lookt forth from my bed
To the cold square of the light--
Unto
God I said,
"Show me why men must fight,

"You, Who to each one say,
Love you one another;
You, Who bid
women obey
Husbands, and sons their mother;
"You, Who of me require
To love what I cannot see,
Milk and a
heart of fire
To nourish what may not be!
"Shall my milk be churn'd into gall,
Or my blood freeze at the fount,

And You make light of it all,
And my love of little account?"
Then as I held my throat,
God answer'd me by a bird,
One long
flourishing note,
The bravest I ever heard;
And I turn'd where my love lay fast
In his wholesome sleep;
About
him my arms I cast
And found grace to weep.
He would do what was right,
As I knew very well--
Yes, but who
made them fight,
And turn'd our heaven to hell?
The more I listen the sighs,
The mourning and the dearth,
The
deeper my heart cries
Over this wounded earth.
VI
i
May the good King
That guards like sheep
Kings and shepherds all

Send us quiet sleep!
Shepherds great and small
Has He in hold;
There need no danger

Threaten field or fold.
Lowly in a manger
That King was born
Of maid undefiled
On a
winter's morn.
He lay a little child
On His mother's knee;
Three kings out of the
East
Came Him to see.

On a mother's breast
Still did He lie:
Said one king to the other,

"Such once was I!"
Then said his brother,
"Even thus, I trow,
Once lay thy simplicity,

_But where is that now_?"
ii
How many a woman's eyes are worn,
Weeping