Coming Home

Five minutes here, and they must steal two more!

shameful! Here have I been five mortal years

and not seen home nor one dear kindred face,

and these abominable slugs, this guard,

this driver, porters—what are they about?—

keep us here motionless, two minutes, three.—

Aha! at last!

                   Good! We shall check our minutes;

we're flying after them, like a mad wind

chasing the leaves it has tossed on in front.

Oh glorious wild speed, what giants' play!

and there are men who tell us poetry

is dead where railways come! Maybe 'tis true,

I'm a bad judge, I've had scant reading time

and little will to read…… and certainly

I've not found railways in what verse I know:

but there's a whizz and whirr as trains go by,

a bullet-like indomitable rush

and then all's done, which makes me often think

one of those men who found out poetry,

and had to write the things just that they saw,

would have made some of their fine crashing lines

that stir one like the marches one knows best,

and the enemy knows best, with trains in them

as easily as chariots.

                   Anyhow

I've poetry and music too to-day

in the very clatter: it goes "Home, home, home."

And they'll think that sharp shriek a kinder sound

than sweetest singing, when it presently

pierces the quiet of the night and sends

its eager shrillness on for miles before

to say I'm no time distant. I can see

my mother's soft pink cheeks (like roses, pale

after a June week's blooming,) flush and wan,

and her lip quiver; I can see the girls,

restless between the hall door and the clock,

hear it and hush and lean expectant heads

to catch the rattle of the coming train;

my father, sitting pshawing by the fire

at all the fuss and waiting, half start up,

dropping his Times, forgetful just so long

that he is not impatient like the rest,

the tender foolish women, and, alert

to hide how he was tempted to fuss too,

reseat himself intent on politics;

and Hugh—I think Hugh must be there with them,

on leave out of his parish for a day,

a truant from the old women and the schools

to be at home with me for long enough

to say "God bless you" in—I can see Hugh,

narrow and straight in his skimp priestly coat,

pacing the room with slow and even steps,

and a most patient face, and in his eyes

that over patience we all know in them

when he is being extra good and calm.

So little change, they write me: all of them

with the same faces, scarce a day's mark there—

except our little Maude who was a child

and is a woman: little Maude grown tall:

the little Maude I left half prude half romp,

who, eager for her grown-up dignities,

tried to forego her mischiefs and would turn,

just in their midst, portentously demure

like a tired sleepy kitten, and to-day

wears all her womanhood inside her heart

and has none for her manners—some of it

for her sweet winsome face though; and a look

that's in her portrait brings my mother back,

though she's not like they tell me. I shall see;

yes I shall see! soon; almost now.

                   Dear home,

to think I am so near!

                   Ah, when I lay

in the hot thirst and fever of my wound,

and saw their faces pressing into mine,

changing and changing, never a one would stay

so long that I could see it like itself,

I scarcely hoped for this. And when I felt

that tiring weakness of my growing strong,

and was so helpless, and the babyish tears

would come without a thought to make them come,

I almost knew this day would never be:

but, oh my happy fortune, not to die,

not even to come home among them then,

with nothing done, a spoiled and worthless wreck

for them to weep at softly out of sight,

but to go stoutly to my post again,

and do my stroke of work as a man should,

and win them this.

                   You little dingy cross,

less precious than my sleeve-links, what a worth

lies in your worthlessness: there's not a man

but gladder lays you in his mother's hand,

or wife's, than he would bring her for his gift

the whole great jewels of an eastern king,

and not a woman but—

                   My mother, though—

sometimes she was not strong—have I been rash,

too thoughtless of her calm, not telling of it?

No, I'll not wear it on me, as I meant,

to take her first dear kisses in: we'll talk

before I show it—in a day or two—

perhaps to-night.

                   I know she'll prize it more

that a life saved went to the winning it.

And tenderhearted Ellen will forgive

my part she shudders at in the red deaths

of battle fields a little more for that—

How sad her letters were; I know she thinks

we learn a heathenish passion after blood,

and, as she said, "to throw our lives like dross

back in our Maker's face:" but bye and bye

I'll teach her how it is, and that we fight

for duty, not like either fiends or fools.

They say they are longing for my history,

told by the fire of evenings; all my deeds,

all my escapes; and I must clear their minds

of fifty puzzles of the journalists,

decide what's true, and make them understand

the battles and the marchings: but my deeds

have been to just be one among them all,

doing what we were bidden as we could,

and my escapes must have been like the rest—

one has no time to know them; just that once,

when I was dragging off the fallen boy,

I knew what death was nearest as it missed,

but I've no memory of more escapes……

except by being wounded, as they know;

and what can I explain of battle plans

made in the councils, whether kept or not

I cannot tell? I only know my part

and theirs with whom I waited at our post

or dashed on at the word, I could not mark

the swaying of the squadrons, the recoils

and shifting ground and sudden strategies,

and had no duty to be watching them.

No, I shall make them better out in print,

and learn in our snug study what I saw

among the rush and smoke.

                   No, I come back

no better talker than I was before,

no readier and no deeper, not like Hugh,

and I must use my unaspiring wits

to say things as I see them, going straight;

just as a plain man's life does, tramping on

the way that lies before one, with no whys.

No whys; ah how that chance word takes me back

to pinafore-time—my father's well-known phrase

"No whying, boy, but do what you are bid."

And once my mother, when first Hugh began

to be so clever, and had found it out

and, pleased at it, perhaps a little pert,

was apt to hit on puzzles, answered him

"our nursery rule was good for afterwards,

spared headaches and spared heartaches, and, well kept,

made the best heroes and best Christians too."

How I can see Hugh looking down to say,

in an odd slow tone, "I will remember that."

And well he has remembered; never a man

went straighter into action than our Hugh;

he knows what side he's on and stands to it:

if I'd a head like his, and wished to change

soldiering for anything, I'd try to learn

a parish parson's work to do it like Hugh.

Will he read prayers to-night? I'd like to hear

my father at it, as it used to be

before we any of us went away—

the old times back again. Oh, all of us

will say our prayers to-night out of glad hearts.

Oh, thank God for the meeting we shall have!

Such joy among us! and the country side

all to be glad for us. Ah well, I fear

there's one will shrink and sadden at my sight

among the welcomes and the happiness,

remembering that her husband was my friend,

and dropped beside me. But I'll go alone—

or maybe with my mother—to her house

and let her have the pain more quietly,

before she sees me in our Sunday pew,

with all the old friends smiling through the prayers

and all but nodding, and a buzzing round

spoiling the parson's reading "Look," and "Look,"

"There's Master Harry come back from the war."

Oh, how my mother's eyes will turn to me,

half unawares, then fix upon her book

that none may see them growing large and moist;

and how my father will look stern and frown,

hiding the treacherous twinkles with the shade

of knitted brows, lest any watching him

should think him moved to have his son by him,

and proud like foolish fathers; but the girls

will be all smiles and flutter, and look round

elate as if no other girls before

had had a soldier brother. And old Will,

out of his corner by the vestry door,

will peer and blink and suck his grins in tight,

trying to mind the sermon and not think

what sport he has for me in the preserves.

Plenty of birds this year, my father writes;

we'll see next week, and—There's the long shrill yell!

Home! all but home!

                   Oh! there, between the trees,

that light, our house—they're waiting for me there.