But as the tide crawls to his full
Without your knowing,
Invading rock and filling pool,
Endlessly flowing;
Lo, while you sit and look at it,
Idle, little thinking,
The flood is brimming at your feet,
Lipping there and winking—
The very same the Great War grew;
Like a flowing tide
It spread its channels thro' and thro'
The quiet countryside.
One day you'd stop: a poster up,
And Lord, how it glared!
The next there'd be a very crop,
And not a body stared.
And then the lorries flung along
By ones and twos, and then
In snaky line some twenty strong,
Full of shouting men.
They made me blench with noise and stench,
But more, I do believe,
To know them gaining inch by inch
The earth whereby we live.
So faded fast the painted past
Beneath the mist of war;
One could not think life had been cast
In sweet lines before.
There was no list in that red mist
For love or wholesome breath,
But making rage our staple grist
We ground the dust of death.
Our men held talk among themselves,
But said little to we;
And soon they went by tens and twelves
Soldiers to be.
I knew how 'twould be from the first,
I think my heart could tell;
I loved a man who never durst
Not do well.
ix
How young, how gay they marcht away,
All our village boys!
Leaving us women here to pray,
Drowning with their noise
Misdoubt and eager mother-love,
Hungry on the watch,
As if they went to race and shove
In a football match.
But my love chose in soberness
Another way, his own;
And God I bless that my distress
Came suddenly down.
A swift November night was falling
In a windless air;
I heard him indoors, heard him calling,
And went, and he was there.
x
He stood still, and his gaze
Was far off, and slow
And quiet the words he says:
"Nancy, I must go."