A CALL TO NATIONAL SERVICE
Up and be doing, all who have a hand To lift, a back to bend. It must not be In times like these that vaguely linger we To air our vaunts and hopes; and leave our land Untended as a wild of weeds and sand.
- Say, then, "I come!" and go, O women and men Of palace, ploughshare, easel, counter, pen;That scareless, scathless, England still may stand.
Would years but let me stir as once I stirred At many a dawn to take the forward track, And with a stride plunged on to enterprize, I now would speed like yester wind that whirred Through yielding pines; and serve with never a slack, So loud for promptness all around outcries!
March 1917.
THE DEAD AND THE LIVING ONE
The dead woman lay in her first night's grave, And twilight fell from the clouds' concave, And those she had asked to forgive forgave.
The woman passing came to a pause By the heaped white shapes of wreath and cross, And looked upon where the other was.
And as she mused there thus spoke she:
"Never your countenance did I see, But you've been a good good friend to me!"Rose a plaintive voice from the sod below:
"O woman whose accents I do not know, What is it that makes you approve me so?""O dead one, ere my soldier went, I heard him saying, with warm intent, To his friend, when won by your blandishment:
"'I would change for that lass here and now!
And if I return I may break my vow To my present Love, and contrive somehow "'To call my own this new-found pearl, Whose eyes have the light, whose lips the curl, I always have looked for in a girl!'