Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/418

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418
WOMEN AND THE WAR

A tiny click of little wooden needles,
Elfin amid the gianthood of war;
Whispers of women, tireless and patient,
Who weave the web afar.


Whispers of women—tireless and patient,
"This is our heart's love," it would seem to say,
"Wrought with the ancient tools of our vocation,
Weave we the web of love from day to day."


And so each soldier, laughing, fighting,—dying
Under the alien skies, in his great hour,
May listen, in death's prescience all-enfolding,
And hear a fairy sound bloom like a flower—


I like to think that soldiers, gaily dying
For the white Christ on fields with shame sown deep,
May hear the tender song of women's needles,
As they fall fast asleep.


AT PARTING

IT was sad weather when you went away,
Wind, and the rain was raining every day.
And all night long I heard in lonesome sleep
The water running under the bows of the ship,
All the dark night and till the dawning grey.


At Salonika it is golden weather.
Go light of heart, O child, light as a feather,
Valiant and full of laughter, free as air.
God is at Salonika—here and there
God and my heart are keeping watch together.


But O when you come back, though skies should weep,
The water running under the bows of the ship
Shall in my dreams make music exquisite
And my all happy sleep be drenched with it,
And you coming home, home through the hours of sleep.


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