Poems 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

by Katharine Tynan

Christmas in the year of the War

NEVERTHELESS this Year of Grief

The Tree of God's in leaf.

The stem, the branch quickeneth

With sap, this year of Death.

For in the time of the flowering thorn

The Babe, the Babe, is born!

Christ's folk, look up, be not dismayed,

The Lord's in the cattle shed.

by Katharine Tynan

The Call

I hear an Army!

Millions of men coming up from the edge of the world,

The ring of unnumbered feet ever louder and louder

Comes on and an like a mighty untameable tide,

Steady, implacable, out of the North and the South,

Out of the East, and the West, they answer the call

Of her who stands, her eyes towards God and the stars,

Liberty, daughter of God, calling her men.

by Katharine Tynan

The Comrades

The angels walk with men in the red ruin and rain,

White and gold, as of old, without spot or stain.

Our warriors fought and died, the white lords by their side.

The angels walk with men.

God doth not forget in the battle, the retreat;

The heart of Love's above the dying and the slain.

There's a ladder to the skies and, armed from Paradise,

The angels walk with men.

by Katharine Tynan

Riding Home

Who are these that go to the high peaks and the snow?

Side by side do they ride, their steady eyes aglow.

Gallant gentlemen, they go spurring o'er the plain;

Home from the war again.

As they pass without a sound, there is many a red wound.

Oh, pale they are and faint they are, these warriors renowned!

Yet smiling all together in the calm sweet weather,

As they ride home together.

by Katharine Tynan

To The Others

This was the gleam then that lured from far

Your son and my son to the Holy War:

Your son and my son for the accolade

With the banner of Christ over them, in steel arrayed.

All quiet roads of life ran on to this;

When they were little for their mother's kiss.

Little feet hastening, so soft, unworn,

To the vows and the vigil and the road of thorn.

by Katharine Tynan

A Song for the New Year {1915}

THE Year of the Sorrows went out with great wind:

Lift up, lift up, O broken hearts, your Lord is kind,

And He shall call His flock home where no storms be

Into a sheltered haven out of sound of the sea.

There shall be bright sands there and a milken hill,

They shall lie in the sun there and drink their fill,

They shall have dew and shade there and grass to the knee,

Safe in a sheltered haven out of sound of the sea.

by Katharine Tynan

Mediation

If Thou, Lord God, willest to judge

This, Thy very piteous clay

Which to save Christ did not grudge

His last dying, I shall say:

Lord, I interpose Christ's death

'Twixt these children and Thy wrath.

Then if Thou shouldst say: Their shame

Is as scarlet in Mine eyes--

by Katharine Tynan

'Mid the Piteous Heaps of Dead

'MID the piteous heaps of dead

Goes one weary golden head

Tossing ever to and fro,

Calling loud and calling low.

Mother, mother, step so light,

Mother, lay your fingers white

On my forehead like a dew !

Mother, mother, where are you?

by Katharine Tynan

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.

by Katharine Tynan

Meetings

As up and down I fare by road and street

The mothers of our men-at-arms I meet

Who die for mine and me,

That we go safe and free,

Sit in the sun, sleep soft and find life sweet.

I have two sons too young to fight, too young,

God grant if my hour comes I may be strong,

And caught in such a strait

by Katharine Tynan

The Convent Garden

The Convent garden lies so near

The road the people go,

If it was quiet you might hear

The nuns' talk, merry and low.

Black London trees have made their screen

From folk who pry and peer,

The sooty sparrows now begin

Their talk of country cheer.

by Katharine Tynan