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She hides her woe, and helps him go,
She sits at home to pray;
He tells her when he met the foe,
But nothing of the way.
She never knows the way, and who
Would know it if she could,
What in his fever-heat he do
Of rage and dust and blood?

The lads go by, the colours fly,
Drums rattle, bugles bray;
We only cry, Let mine not die–
No thought for whom he slay.
But woman bares a martyr breast,
And herself points the flame:
Her son, a hero or a beast,
Will never be the same.

iii

When forth my love to duty went
I sought my old home,
My few months’ joy over and spent,
And lean years to come.
My mother blinkt her patient eyes;
She said, It was to be.
Was I less temperate or more wise
To question her decree?

Was it for this, our clasp and kiss?
For this end and no other
That I was shapt to have increase,
And call’d to be mother?
Did God make o’er the power to soar
On men, that they should sink?
Did He outpour a flood of war
And leave us on the brink?

Was’t so He wove the robe of Love,
To mock the lovely earth?
Sees He, above, creation move
To death, not birth?
Go, thou dear head, for God is dead,
And Death is our Lord:
Between us, red, lies in the bed
War, like a naked sword.

iv

O failing heart, accept your part,
And thank the Lord, Who bound
Your labour daily to the mart,
Your service to the ground!
Take to the mart your stricken heart,
Tho’ the chaffer graze it;
Shrink not altho’ the quick flesh smart–
But meet pain and praise it!

v

He came to see me once again,
Stiffen’d in his new buff:
A few short hours compact of strain,
Too hasty for love;
For Love can never be confin’d,
But asks eternity.
To nurse the lov’d one in the mind
The bond must first be free.

And he, he now serv’d otherwhere
And could not be the same;
To all the world my love was there
And answer’d to his name;
But not to me, oh, not to me
The kisses of his lips
Were as of old, but guardedly,
Like sunlight in eclipse.

The moment came, I held him close,
But had no word to say–
Good-bye, sweetheart, Good-bye, Blush Rose:
‘Twas his old way.
Then in a hush which seem’d to rock
Me like a leaf about,
I heard the pulsing of the clock,
Counting my dear life out.

And I am here, and you are, where?
While the long hours go by,
And on my eyes the glaze of care,
And in my heart a cry.
Bury my heart deep in the grave
Where all its grace is hid:
What other service should I have
Than tend my lovely dead?

vi

Then waiting, watching, judging news,
Then terror in the night–
I used to start up with the dews
All over me of fright.
I dream’d of him on stormy seas;
Then, in a woodland bare,
I saw my love on hands and knees,
With blood upon his hair.

Along the limits of the wood,
A green bank full of holes,
With lichen’d stumps which lean’d or stood
Like crazy channel-poles:
‘Twas there I saw my love’s drawn face,
A face of paper-white,
Wherein just for a choking space
His eyes shone burning bright;