A Lament
CLOUDS is under clouds and rain
For there will not come again
Two, the beloved sire and son
Whom all gifts were rained upon.
Kindness is all done, alas,
Courtesy and grace must pass,
Beauty, wit and charm lie dead,
Love no more may wreathe the head.
Now the branch that waved so high
No wind tosses to the sky;
There's no flowering time to come,
No sweet leafage and no bloom.
Percy, golden-hearted boy,
In the heyday of his joy
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poem by Katharine Tynan
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The Golden Boy
IN times of peace, so clean and bright,
And with a new-washed morning face,
He walked Pall Mall, a goodly sight,
The finished flower of all the race.
Or through Bond Street and Piccadilly,
Went spick-and-span, without a soil,
As careless as the July lily
That spins not, neither does she toil.
He took his soldiering as sport,
And beauteous in his mufti stirred
Romance i' the simple female sort
That loves a guardsman or a lord.
And now, knee-deep in muddy water,
Unwashed, unshaven, see him go!
His garments stained with mud and slaughter
Would break the heart of Savile Row.
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poem by Katharine Tynan
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The New Recruit
The lads were once my comrades,
They stay at home content.
And now's the time of cricket,
They count the days well spent.
They walk with girls o' Sundays,
All in their Sunday clothes;
And of a Sunday evening
Go where good liquor flows.
Their way's no longer my way,
For I must follow now
The drum-tap and the bugle,
While they're for shop and plough.
Good-bye, good-bye, kind people,
And all I leave behind,
To girls that used to kiss me,
To one was never kind.
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poem by Katharine Tynan
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The Riders
RHEIMS is down in fire and smoke,
The hour of God is at the stroke.
Round and round the ruined place,-
Jesu, Mary, give us grace!
There are two riders clad in mail,
Silver as the moon pale.
One is tall as a knight's spear,
The younger one is lowlier.
Small and slim and like a maid-
Steeds and riders cast no shade.
Who are then these cavaliers?
There was a sound as Heaven dropt tears.
Who are these that ride so light,
Soundless in the flaming light,
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poem by Katharine Tynan
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The Garden
I know a garden like a child,
Clean and new-washed and reconciled.
It grows its own sweet way, yet still
Has guidance of some tender will
That clips, confines, its wilder mood
And makes it happy, being good.
Around the lordly mountains stand,
For this is an enchanted land,
As though their splendours stood to grace
This little lovely garden place,
Looking with wise and keeping eyes
Upon the garden sanctities.
Box borders edge each little bed,
Paths narrow for a child to tread
Divide the kitchen garden, dear
And sweet with musk and lavender,
And water-mints and beans in bloom.
Be sure the honeybee's at home.
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poem by Katharine Tynan
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No Man's Land
Not to an angel but a friend
He turned at the day's bitter end.
It was so comforting to feel
Some one was near, to see him kneel
By the deep shell-hole's edge: to know
He was not left to the fierce foe.
This soldier who had eased his head
And staunched the flow where it had bled,
Who made a pillow of his breast
Where the poor tossing head might rest,
Wore a young face he used to know
Yesterday, some time, long ago.
The night's cold it was bitter enough,
But who shall keep the fierce Day off?
And must he lie, be burnt and baked
In the hot sands, with lips unslaked? --
Will no one give him dews and rain?
Lord, send the frozen night again!
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poem by Katharine Tynan
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The Choice
When skies are blue and days are bright
A kitchen-garden's my delight,
Set round with rows of decent box
And blowsy girls of hollyhocks.
Before the lark his Lauds hath done
And ere the corncrake's southward gone;
Before the thrush good-night hath said
And the young Summer's put to bed.
The currant-bushes' spicy smell,
Homely and honest, likes me well,
The while on strawberries I feast,
And raspberries the sun hath kissed.
Beans all a-blowing by a row.
Of hives that great with honey go,
With mignonette and heaths to yield
The plundering bee his honey-field.
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poem by Katharine Tynan
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Unfit
With younger men he takes his stand,
To the recruiting-sergeant nigh,
Sees others chosen: lifts a hand
In hopes to catch the unwilling eye,
While his mood turns to black despair
Heedless of those that grin and stare.
Careless of jibe and jeer he waits,
Thrusts himself where the eye must fall,
A voice, indifferent as Fate's,
Orders 'Stand back!' and that is all.
'Too old!' He steps down to make room
For younger men more slow to come.
Too old at fifty! But he feels
There's lots of fighting in him yet.
Some hint of glory lifts, reveals,
In the smirched days he would forget.
They might blot out the shameful past
If he fell fighting at the last.
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poem by Katharine Tynan
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Immortality
So I have sunk my roots in earth
Since that my pretty boys had birth;
And fear no more the grave and gloom,
I, with the centuries to come.
As the tree blossoms so bloom I,
Flinging wild branches to the sky;
Renew each year my leafy suit,
Strike with the years a deeper root.
Shelter a thousand birds to be,
A thousand herds give praise to me;
And in my kind and grateful shade
How many a weary head be laid.
I clothe myself without a stain.
In me a child is born again,
A child that looks with innocent eyes
On a new world with glad surprise.
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poem by Katharine Tynan
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The Nurse
Such innocent companionship
Is hers, whether she wake or sleep,
'Tis scarcely strange her face should wear
The young child's grave and innocent air.
All the night long she hath by her
The quiet breathing, the soft stir,
Nor knows how in that tender place
The children's angels veil the face.
She wakes at dawn with bird and child
To earth new-washed and reconciled,
The hour of silence and of dew,
When God hath made His world anew.
She sleeps at eve, about the hour
Of bedtime for the bird and flower,
When daisies, evening primroses,
Know that the hour of closing is.
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poem by Katharine Tynan
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