A Prayer { For Those Who Shall Return}

LORD, when they come back again

    From the dreadful battlefield

To the common ways of men,

    Be Thy mercy, Lord, revealed!

Make them to forget the dread

Fields of dying and the dead!

Let them go unhaunted, Lord,

    By the sights that they have seen:

Guard their dreams from shell and sword;

    Lead them by the pastures green,

That they wander all night long

In the fields where they were young.

Grant no charnel horrors slip

    'Twixt them and their child's soft face.

Breast to breast and lip to lip,

    Let the lovers meet, embrace!

Be they innocent of all

Memories that affright, appal.

Let their ears love music still,

    And their eyes rejoice to see

Glory on the sea and hill,

    Beauty in the flower and tree.

Drop a veil that none may raise

Over dreadful nights and days.