light

Mr Pierce the butcher
Got news his son was missing
About a month before
The closing of the war.
A bald man, tall and careful,
He stood in his shop and found
No bottom to his sadness,
Nowhere for it to stop.
When my aunt came through the door
Delivering the milk,
He spoke, with his quiet air
Of a considerate teacher,
But words weren't up to it,
He turned back to the meat.
The message was in error.
Later that humid summer
At a local high school fete,
I saw, returned, the son

Good people of high and low degree,
I pray ye all to list to me,
And I'll relate a harrowing tale of the sea
Concerning the burning of the ship "Kent" in the Bay of Biscay,
Which is the most appalling tale of the present century.

She carried a crew, including officers, of 148 men,
And twenty lady passengers along with them;
Besides 344 men of the 31st Regiment,
And twenty officers with them, all seemingly content.

Also fhe soldiers' wives, which numbered forty-three,

Oh, who may this dead warrior be
That to his grave they bring?
`Tis William, Duke of Normandy,
The conqueror and king.

Across the sea, with fire and sword,
The English crown he won;
The lawless Scots they owned him lord,
But now his rule is done.

A king should die from length of years,
A conqueror in the field,
A king amid his people's tears,
A conqueror on his shield.

But he, who ruled by sword and flame,
Who swore to ravage France,
Like some poor serf without a name,

Not a drum was heard, nor a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning;
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light
And the lantern dimly burning.

No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
Nor in sheet nor in shroud we wound him;
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest
With his martial cloak around him.

How well do I remember
Of a burial in the snow,
On a winter's evening
Some fifteen years ago;
The ground was covered over
With the beautiful crystal snow,
And it glistened in the moonlight,
Like diamonds all aglow.
II
It was a pleasant evening,
That merry Christmas eve;
And I never can forget, how
The frost hung on the tree.
The moon was shining clearly,
And the sleigh-bells rang so sweet;
Ah, it was splendid sleighing,
The snow was two feet deep.
III

On the fair green hills of Rio
There grows a fearful stain:
The poor who come to Rio
And can't go home again.

On the hills a million people,
A million sparrows, nest,
Like a confused migration
That's had to light and rest,

Building its nests, or houses,
Out of nothing at all, or air.
You'd think a breath would end them,
They perch so lightly there.

But they cling and spread like lichen,
And people come and come.
There's one hill called the Chicken,

We may sigh o'er the heavy burdens
Of the black, the brown and white;
But if we all clasped hands together
The burdens would be more light.
How to solve life's saddest problems,
Its weariness, want and woe,
Was answered by One who suffered
In Palestine long ago.

He gave from his heart this precept,
To ease the burdens of men,
"As ye would that others do to you
Do ye even so to them."
Life's heavy, wearisome burdens
Will change to a gracious trust

Before the seas and mountains were brought forth,
I reigned. I hung the universe in space,
I capped earth's poles with ice to South and North,
And set the moving tides their bounds and place.

I smoothed the granite mountains with my hand,
My fingers gave the continents their form;
I rent the heavens and loosed upon the land
The fury of the whirlwind and the storm.

I stretched the dark sea like a nether sky
Fronting the stars between the ice-clad zones;
I gave the deep his thunder; the Most High

"Build me a house," said the Master,
"But not on the shifting sand,
Mid the wreck and roar of tempests,
A house that will firmly stand.

"I will bring thee windows of agates,
And gates of carbuncles bright,
And thy fairest courts and portals
Shall be filled with love and light.

"Thou shalt build with fadeless rubies,
All fashioned around the throne,
A house that shall last forever,
With Christ as the cornerstone.

"It shall be a royal mansion,
A fair and beautiful thing,

A buglar boy from barrack (it is over the hill
There)—boy bugler, born, he tells me, of Irish
Mother to an English sire (he
Shares their best gifts surely, fall how things will),

This very very day came down to us after a boon he on
My late being there begged of me, overflowing
Boon in my bestowing,
Came, I say, this day to it—to a First Communion.

Here he knelt then ín regimental red.
Forth Christ from cupboard fetched, how fain I of feet
To his youngster take his treat!