The Brothers (For Arnold and Donald Fletcher)
One called from Salonika and his call
Rang to his brother;
Forded wide rivers, climbed the mountain wall,
Seeking the other.
Are you asleep, Arnold, or do you wake?
Our way's together!
The day's before us and the path we take
Over the heather.
As oft before, breasting the Wicklow hills,
Light-foot and leaping
Over the bog-pools and the singing rills,
Side by side keeping.
We have known all the best that life can give,
Tasted the sweetest;
Shall we grow old, lag heavy-foot and grieve,
We, who were fleetest?
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poem by Katharine Tynan
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What turned the Germans Back
WHAT turned the German myriads back
From Paris whither they had won?
The sword dropped from their hold grown slack;
Children of Attila the Hun,
Like Attila, went backward driven
By a young shepherdess of Heaven.
A shepherdess is Genevieve,
And though her flock should wander light,
This shepherdess is quick to save
The black, the speckled and the white.
She takes her golden crook and goes
And deals destruction to its foes.
She who turned Attila back, so slim,
A shepherdess that keeps the flock,
Waited as once she did for him,
Slight as a reed or her own crook;
'Turn back in God's Name!' They went back.
The tide is stemmed for her sweet sake.
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poem by Katharine Tynan
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To One in Grief
SIMON the Cyrenean bore
The Cross of Christ up Calvary Hill.
Blessed be Simon's lot before
Honour and ease and world's good-will
You,--you would choose his lot above
All gifts and glories, yea, all love!
Now when for your two glorious men
Your heart is broken, and your joy
On earth shall not be built again,--
Oh, what a lover, what a boy !--
Dear heart, look up! Who helps you on
The way that you must walk alone ?
For when the Cross that you must bear
Galls your poor shoulders till they bleed,
And when the thorns are on your hair,
And Love-lies-bleeding: then indeed
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poem by Katharine Tynan
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The Sad Spring
The Spring weeps, she is forlorn;
Well that she may weep, alas!
Now that many babes are born
Whose dear fathers lie in grass.
Snowdrops in the frozen earth
Faint and are not comforted;
Never was so sad a birth,
Never was so sad a bed.
She must bear her pangs alone.
Where is sorrow like to hers?
In an anguish cold as stone
Her dead soldier's child she bears.
Now her trembling arms will hold
Close the piteous downy thing
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poem by Katharine Tynan
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The Lowlands Of Flanders
THE night that I was married
Our Captain came to me:
Rise up, rise up, new-married man
And come at once with me.
For the Lowlands of Flanders,
It's there that we must fight;
So look your last and buss your last,
For we shall sail to-night.
'Tis all for our Counterie
And for our King we go
To the Lowlands of Flanders
Against the German foe.
The girl that weds a soldier
Must never blench for fear;
I kissed my last and looked my last
Upon my lovely dear.
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poem by Katharine Tynan
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The Dead Coach
At night when sick folk wakeful lie,
I heard the dead coach passing by,
And heard it passing wild and fleet,
And knew my time was come not yet.
Click-clack, click-clack, the hoofs went past,
Who takes the dead coach travels fast,
On and away through the wild night,
The dead must rest ere morning light.
If one might follow on its track
The coach and horses, midnight black,
Within should sit a shape of doom
That beckons one and all to come.
God pity them to-night who wait
To hear the dead coach at their gate,
And him who hears, though sense be dim,
The mournful dead coach stop for him.
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poem by Katharine Tynan
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The Bird's Bargain
'O spare my cherries in the net,'
Brother Benignus prayed; 'and I
Summer and winter, shine and wet,
Will pile the blackbirds' table high.'
'O spare my youngling peas,' he prayed,
'That for the Abbot's table be;
And every blackbird shall be fed;
Yea, they shall have their fill,' said he.
His prayer, his vow, the blackbirds heard,
And spared his shining garden-plot.
In abstinence went every bird,
All the old thieving ways forgot.
He kept his promise to his friends,
And daily set them finest fare
Of corn and meal and manchet-ends,
With marrowy bones for winter bare.
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poem by Katharine Tynan
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A Woman Commends Her Little Son
To the aid of my little son
I call all the magnalities --
Archangel, Dominion,
Powers and Principalities.
Mary without a stain,
Joseph that was her spouse,
All God's women and men,
Out of His glorious House.
The Twelve Apostles by him:
Matthew and Mark and John,
Luke, the Evangelists nigh him,
So he fight not alone.
Patrick, Columcille, Bride --
The Saints of the Irish nation;
Keiran, Kevin beside,
In the death and the desolation.
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poem by Katharine Tynan
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Missing
To Leucha Mary Warner
He is 'Missing,' and forlorn
Drag her days in grief and pain.
Every morn a hope is born,
Only to be lost again.
'Missing!' Almost better 'Killed.'
The long anguish breaks her heart
That's a dead thing, numbed and chilled
Till the live fear bids it start.
Now a knocking at the door,
Now a shouting in the street,
Makes her poor heart run before,
The most bitter news to meet.
'Missing!' It may be he dies
'Mid his foes and comfortless.
When sleep shuts her heavy eyes,
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poem by Katharine Tynan
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Alienation
For the first time since he was born
Her son, her rose without a thorn,
They are at variance, they who were
Always such closest friends and dear.
Another face is in his dreams
Under the sunbeams and moonbeams.
In his changed glances she discovers
Something, some chill between two lovers --
Something of fear, and oh, it hurts!
But shall not Love have its deserts
And win forgiveness, though she still
Sets her poor will against his will?
For all day long the battle calls,
And in the quiet evenfalls,
And in the night which else is dumb,
He hears the bugle and the drum.
And the wild longing in him stirs
For the fierce battle. He's not hers,
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poem by Katharine Tynan
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