You think I cannot understand. Ah, but I do ... I have been wrung with anger and compassion for you. I wonder if you'd loathe my pity, if you knew.
But you _shall_ know. I've carried in my heart too long This secret burden. Has not silence wrought _your_ wrong-- Brought you to dumb and wintry middle-age, with grey Unfruitful withering?--Ah, the pitiless things I say...
What do you ask your God for, at the end of day, Kneeling beside your bed with bowed and hopeless head? What mercy can He give you?--Dreams of the unborn Children that haunt your soul like loving words unsaid-- Dreams, as a song half-heard through sleep in early morn?
I see you in the chapel, where you bend before The enhaloed calm of everlasting Motherhood That wounds your life; I see you humbled to adore The painted miracle you've never understood. Tender, and bitter-sweet, and shy, I've watched you holding Another's child. O childless woman, was it then That, with an instant's cry, your heart, made young again, Was crucified for ever--those poor arms enfolding The life, the consummation that had been denied you? I too have longed for children. Ah, but you must not weep. Something I have to whisper as I kneel beside you... And you must pray for me before you fall asleep.
_Have you forgotten yet?_ ... For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days, Like traffic checked awhile at the crossing of city-ways: And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow Like clouds in the lit heavens of life; and you're a man reprieved to go, Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare. _But the past is just the same--and War's a bloody game... Have you forgotten yet? ... Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget._
Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz-- The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets? Do you remember the rats; and the stench Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench-- And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain? Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?'
Do you remember that hour of din before the attack-- And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men? Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back With dying eyes and lolling heads--those ashen-grey Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?