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. AFTERMATH _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? _Have you forgotten yet? ... Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you'll never forget._ _March, 1919_. FALLING ASLEEP Voices moving about in the quiet house: Thud of feet and a muffled shutting of doors: Everyone yawning ... only the clocks are alert. Out in the night there's autumn-smelling gloom Crowded with whispering trees,--looming of oaks That roared in wild wet gales: across the park The hollow cry of hounds like lonely bells: And I know that the clouds are moving across the moon, The low, red, rising moon. The herons call And wrangle by their pool; and hooting owls Sail from the wood across pale stocks of wheat.