THE BLIND MAN AND HIS SON
(1915)
"The distant boom of angry guns
No longer fills my ear.
Oh! whither have we fled, my son?
Tell me, that I may hear."
"Father, we are in England!"
"No more I hear the stormy wind
Amid the rigging roar.
I feel beneath my tottering feet
The firm ground of the shore.
Is this the end of all our woes?
Shall we not suffer more?"
"Father, we are in England!"
"I hear the sound of kindly speech,
But do not understand;
I feel I've wandered very far,
Far from the fatherland;
How comes it that these tones are not
Those of an unknown land?"
"Father, we are in England!"
"I feel in all the air around
Freedom's sweet breath respire.
I feel celestial fingers creep
The birds, the trees, the babbling streams
Speak to me of our home,
Why does my grief less bitter grow
And rest so dear become?"
"Father, we are in England!"
"Bend down upon thy knees, my son,
And take into thy hand,
Thy wounded hand, and mine, somewhat
Of the earth of this good land,
That dreaming of our home, we two
May kiss the soil of England!"
Emile Cammaerts
From "War Poems and Other Translations"—By Lord Curzon. By permission of John Lane, The Bodley Head, London