A Father of Women and other poems

Excerpt

A FATHER OF WOMEN

Ad Sororem E. B.

“Thy father was transfused into thy blood.”

Dryden: Ode to Mrs. Anne Killigrew.

      Our father works in us,
The daughters of his manhood.  Not undone
Is he, not wasted, though transmuted thus,
      And though he left no son.

      Therefore on him I cry
To arm me: “For my delicate mind a casque,
A breastplate for my heart, courage to die,
      Of thee, captain, I ask.

      “Nor strengthen only; press
A finger on this violent blood and pale,
Over this rash will let thy tenderness
      A while pause, and prevail.

      “And shepherd-father, thou
Whose staff folded my thoughts before my birth,
Control them now I am of earth, and now
      Thou art no more of earth.

      “O liberal, constant, dear!
Crush in my nature the ungenerous art
Of the inferior; set me high, and here,
      Here garner up thy heart.”

      Like to him now are they,
The million living fathers of the War—
Mourning the crippled world, the bitter day—
      Whose striplings are no more.

      The crippled world!  Come then,
Fathers of women with your honour in trust;
Approve, accept, know them daughters of men,
      Now that your sons are dust.

      There is no length of days
But yours, boys who were children once.  Of old
The past beset you in your childish ways,
      With sense of Time untold!

      What have you then forgone?
A history?  This you had.  Or memories?
These, too, you had of your far-distant dawn.
      No further dawn seems his,

      The old man who shares with you,
But has no more, no more.  Time’s mystery
Did once for him the most that it can do:
      He has had infancy.

      And all his dreams, and all
His loves for mighty Nature, sweet and few,
Are but the dwindling past he can recall
      Of what his childhood knew.

      He counts not any more
His brief, his present years.  But O he knows
How far apart the summers were of yore,
      How far apart the snows.

      Therefore be satisfied;
Long life is in your treasury ere you fall;
Yes, and first love, like Dante’s.  O a bride
      For ever mystical!

      Irrevocable good,—
You dead, and now about, so young, to die,—
Your childhood was; there Space, there Multitude,
      There dwelt Antiquity.

NURSE EDITH CAVELL

Two o’clock, the morning of October 12th, 1915.

      To her accustomed eyes
The midnight-morning brought not such a dread
As thrills the chance-awakened head that lies
In trivial sleep on the habitual bed.

      ’Twas yet some hours ere light;
And many, many, many a break of day
Had she outwatched the dying; but this night
Shortened her vigil was, briefer the way.

      By dial of the clock
’Twas day in the dark above her lonely head.
“This day thou shalt be with Me.”  Ere the cock
Announced that day she met the Immortal Dead.

On London fell a clearer light;
   Caressing pencils of the sun
Defined the distances, the white
   Houses transfigured one by one,
The “long, unlovely street” impearled.
O what a sky has walked the world!

Most happy year!  And out of town
   The hay was prosperous, and the wheat;
The silken harvest climbed the down;
   Moon after moon was heavenly-sweet
Stroking the bread within the sheaves,
Looking twixt apples and their leaves.

And while this rose made round her cup,
   The armies died convulsed.  And when
This chaste young silver sun went up
   Softly, a thousand shattered men,
One wet corruption, heaped the plain,
After a league-long throb of pain.

Flower following tender flower; and birds,
   And berries; and benignant skies
Made thrive the serried flocks and herds.—
   Yonder are men shot through the eyes....