Kitabı oku: «The Ballad of Ensign Joy», sayfa 6

 
But Ermyntrude's training a
splendid boy
Twenty years younger than En-
sign Joy.
On balance, a British gain!
 
 
AND Ermyntrude, did she
lose her all
Or find it, two years ago?
O young girl-wives of the boys
who fall,
With your youth and your
babes to show!
No heart but bleeds for your
widowhood.
Yet Life is with you, and Life is
good.
No bone of your bone lies low!
 
 
YOUR blessedness came – as
it went – in a day.
Deep dread but heightened
your mirth.
Your idols' feet never turned to
clay —
Never lit upon common earth.
Love is the Game but is not the
Goal:
You played it together, body and
soul,
And you had your Candle's
worth.
 
 
YES! though the Candle light
a Shrine,
And heart cannot count the
cost,
You are Winners yet in its tender
shine!
Would they choose to have
lived and lost?
There are chills, you see, for the
finest hearts;
But, once it is only old Death
that parts,
There can never come twinge
of frost.
 
 
AND this be our comfort for
Every Boy
Cut down in his high heyday,
Or ever the Sweets of the Morn-
ing cloy,
Or the Green Leaf wither
away;
So a sunlit billow curls to a crest,
And shouts as it breaks at its
loveliest,
In a glory of rainbow spray!
 
 
BE it also the making of
Ermyntrude,
And many a hundred more —
Compact of foibles and forti-
tude —
Woo'd, won, and widow'd, in
War.
God, keep us gallant and unde-
filed,
Worthy of Husband, Lover, or
– Child…
Sweet as themselves at the
core!