Boy of My Heart

by Marie Connor Leighton

To your dear, far, forgetting land;

These I send in memory,

Knowing You will understand."

"Your dear, far, forgetting land!"

Oh, the reproach in those words! And do we not, most of us, deserve that reproach?

I took out his sword from the drawer in which I had wrapped it away in silk, and I very nearly bowed myself before it in my passion of reverence.

Strange! That one should regard as so sacred a thing that is meant to kill!

Of all such things, it is only the sword that is held holy. Nobody reverences a revolver, while a dagger is mean and sly and a rifle is nothing in particular, like a gardening tool. But a sword is a glory and a joy, and now, as I handled the sword of the boy of my heart, I could have laughed for sheer delight in all the splendid things that it stood for.

What a pity that it should have become a mere show thing, wanted only on parade and never taken out to the Front!