(For My Mother)
The halls that were loud with the merry tread
of young and careless feet
Are still with a stillness that is too
drear to seem like holiday,
And never a gust of laughter breaks the calm
of the dreaming street
Or rises to shake the ivied walls and
frighten the doves away.
The dust is on book and on empty desk, and the
tennis-racquet and balls
Lie still in their lonely locker and wait
for a game that is never played,
And over the study and lecture-room and the
river and meadow falls
A stern peace, a strange peace, a peace
that War has made.
For many a youthful shoulder now is gay with
an epaulet,
And the hand that was deft with a cricket-bat
is defter with a sword,
And some of the lads will laugh to-day where
the trench is red and wet,
And some will win on the bloody field
the accolade of the Lord.
They have taken their youth and mirth away
from the study and playing-ground
To a new school in an alien land beneath
an alien sky;
Out in the smoke and roar of the fight their
lessons and games are found,
And they who were learning how to live
are learning how to die.
And after the golden day has come and the war
is at an end,
A slab of bronze on the chapel wall will
tell of the noble dead.
And every name on that radiant list will be
the name of a friend,
A name that shall through the centuries
in grateful prayers be said.
And there will be ghosts in the old school,
brave ghosts with laughing eyes,
On the field with a ghostly cricket-bat,
by the stream with a ghostly rod;
They will touch the hearts of the living with
a flame that sanctifies,
A flame that they took with strong young
hands
from the altar-fires of God.