LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN. 1917.
TO
MY WIFE
I.
So I have known this life,
These beads of coloured days,
This self the string.
What is this thing?
Not beauty, no; not greed,
O, not indeed;
Not all, though much;
Its colour is not such.
It has no eyes to see,
It has no ears;
It is a red hour's war
Followed by tears.
It is an hour of time,
An hour of road,
Flesh is its goad;
Yet, in the sorrowing lands,
Women and men take hands.
O earth, give us the corn,
Come rain, come sun;
We men who have been born
Have tasks undone.
Out of this earth
Comes the thing birth,
The thing unguessed, unwon.