The Village Wifes Lament | Page 9

spend and to spend.
But his great eyes stared
Till he seemed all eyes,
And more than I
dared
Meet looks so wise.
Wondering and darkly blue,
Pondering and slow,
They would look
you thro' and thro',
Then tire and let you go,
And fall back to vacancy,
As if the poor thing plain'd,
"Why was I
not let be,
And what have I gain'd?"
'Twas more than I could bear,
I pray'd that he might die;
And God
must have heard my prayer,
For he went with a little sigh:
A flutter, a murmur, a sigh
Lighter than dawn wind--
It was his soft
Good-bye;
And all my life lay behind.
I wonder if they were wise,
Those three kings of the East
Who
offer'd gifts of price
To the Child on a Girl's breast.
But if they were wise, their sons
Have other counsel than they:
The

gifts they offer are guns,
And the children's parents they slay.
ix
He went before my load was quicken'd,
And I lay in alone.
He was
not there when baby sicken'd,
Nor when it was gone.
I walkt with
Mother to the church,
With Mother and Fan,
My hard eyes ever on
the search--
Pity me who can!
The grief was bad enough to bear,
So dreadfully to wean it;
But to
go home and leave it there,
And he had never seen it--!
It was a
thing to thank God for
That home for me was none;
I knew before
we reacht the door
That my home life was done.
x
Now limpt or dragg'd about our street
The wounded men in blue,

Trailing the feet which had been fleet,
Or crutching one for two;

Like ghosts of men past out of ken,
Pale and uncertain-eyed,
Whose
gaze would flicker out, and then
Come back with hasty pride.
What they had seen they never told,
Nor what they had done:
I saw
young lads turn'd suddenly old;
I saw the blind in the sun
Look up
to pray, as if the blue
Was shapt like a cross:
There came back one
my husband knew,
Spoke kindly of my loss.
He told me how my love was dead;
He was not the first!
Broadcast
our land the word of dread
Told women the worst.
They say, let
love and light be given
So we keep Liberty;
But I say there is no
more Heaven
If men must so be free.
xi
Can it be own'd that kings were crown'd,
Consecrate to such evil?

God-appointed, by God anointed
Only to play the devil!

Their men

to bind of the tiger kind,
To bind and then to goad,
Blundering,
slavering, hot and blind,
On murder's hollow road?
If kings are so, then let all go--
Let my dear love cast down
His
lovely life, so we lay low
The last to wear a crown.
I'll look upon
the steadfast stars,
Patient and true and wise,
And read in them the
end of wars,
As in my dead love's eyes.
O Lord of Life, for whom this earth
Should image back Thy thought,

Wherein the mystery of birth
In Love like Thine be wrought,
If
pity stands with Thy commands,
Grant a short breathing-space
Ere
men hold up their bloody hands
Before Thy awful face.
Note
This poem is dramatic, and I am not to be supposed answerable for all
that it expresses; nevertheless I think that my own convictions about
aggressive war are very much those of my Village Wife. Of defensive
war, of war to save the lives of our children, of war to save humanity
itself, there cannot be two sane opinions: that is a pious duty forced
upon us; but it becomes every day more inconceivable to me how men
can engage in the other kind of war, and how, in particular, a people so
provident as the German people could have hoodwinked themselves
into believing that they could be better off by such a monstrous means
as warfare has now become. They had behind them the experience of
the Russians and Japanese; they had all about them the evidences of
their forty years' commercial activity; they must have known, or at least
their governors must have known, what kind of results might be looked
for from modern armament--and yet they dared risk the dereliction of
human morality, the cutting off of a generation of men, and their own
national bankruptcy. Whether it was the madness of lust, or of pride, or
of fear, it was a madness which has procured the greatest disaster of
recorded time, and revealed a criminal folly in themselves which it will
take more than two generations to efface. Indeed, German blood-lust
will become one of the standing legends of History.

The Village Wife knows nothing of the Germans, however, and her
reproaches strike at the heart of Mankind. So long as Mankind looks
upon aggressive war as a reasonable, if ultimate, appeal, her reproaches
will have force, and be deserved. They, or something like them (with
the sanction of inspiration upon them) will, I believe, be the means of
our redemption. As human nature still actually is, no League of Nations
conceivable to us will be able to save us from war. Rend your