Poems by Katharine Tynan

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Joining The Colours

THERE they go marching all in step so gay!

Smooth-cheeked and golden, food for shells and guns.

Blithely they go as to a wedding day,

The mothers' sons.

The drab street stares to see them row on row

On the high tram-tops, singing like the lark.

Too careless-gay for courage, singing they go

Into the dark.

155

by Katharine Tynan

A Girl's Song

The Meuse and Marne have little waves;

The slender poplars o'er them lean.

One day they will forget the graves

That give the grass its living green.

Some brown French girl the rose will wear

That springs above his comely head;

Will twine it in her russet hair,

Nor wonder why it is so red.

121

by Katharine Tynan

The Broken Soldier

The broken soldier sings and whistles day to dark;

He's but the remnant of a man, maimed and half-blind,

But the soul they could not harm goes singing like the lark,

Like the incarnate Joy that will not be confined.

The Lady at the Hall has given him a light task,

He works in the gardens as busy as a bee;

One hand is but a stump and his face a pitted mask;

The gay soul goes singing like a bird set free.

105

Katharine Tynan

Any Woman

I am the pillars of the house;

The keystone of the arch am I.

Take me away, and roof and wall

Would fall to ruin me utterly.

I am the fire upon the hearth,

I am the light of the good sun,

I am the heat that warms the earth,

Which else were colder than a stone.

142

Katharine Tynan

The Old Soldier

Lest the young soldiers be strange in heaven,

God bids the old soldier they all adored

Come to Him and wait for them, clean, new-shriven,

A happy doorkeeper in the House of the Lord.

Lest it abash them, the strange new splendour,

Lest it affright them, the new robes clean;

Here's an old face, now, long-tried, and tender,

A word and a hand-clasp as they troop in.

162

Katharine Tynan

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.

130

Katharine Tynan

Turn O' The Year

This is the time when bit by bit

The days begin to lengthen sweet

And every minute gained is joy -

And love stirs in the heart of a boy.

This is the time the sun, of late

Content to lie abed till eight,

Lifts up betimes his sleepy head -

And love stirs in the heart of a maid.

131

Katharine Tynan

A Hero

He was so foolish, the poor lad,

He made superior people smile

Who knew not of the wings he had

Budding and growing all the while;

Nor that the laurel wreath was made

Already for his curly head.

Silly and childish in his ways;

They said: "His future comes to naught."

182

Katharine Tynan

Easter

Bring flowers to strew His way,

Yea, sing, make holiday;

Bid young lambs leap,

And earth laugh after sleep.

For now He cometh forth

Winter flies to the north,

Folds wings and cries

Amid the bergs and ice.

118

Katharine Tynan

A Gardener-Sage

Here in the garden-bed,

Hoeing the celery,

Wonders the Lord has made

Pass ever before me.

I see the young birds build,

And swallows come and go,

And summer grow and gild,

And winter die in snow.

103

Katharine Tynan

Lambs

He sleeps as a lamb sleeps,

Beside his mother.

Somewhere in yon blue deeps

His tender brother

Sleeps like a lamb and leaps.

He feeds as a lamb might,

Beside his mother.

Somewhere in fields of light

104

Katharine Tynan

Blessings

God bless the little orchard brown

Where the sap stirs these quickening days.

Soon in a white and rosy gown

The trees will give great praise.

God knows I have it in my mind,

The white house with the golden eaves.

God knows since it is left behind

That something grieves and grieves.

120

Katharine Tynan