Page:Canadian poems of the great war.djvu/168

 Blanche E. Holt Murison

The Mothering Heart of Empire

Is breaking with wild alarms. Dear God ! Give peace, and bring them back,

The sons to their mothers arms. The glamour and glory of War ! O men !

The cost of it who can say? For only God and the mothers know

The price that the mothers pay.

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��THY SONS SHALL COME FROM FAR

HEARD the voice of old-time prophecy, Thy sons shall come from far ! was what it said : And then I thought of all our deathless dead, Who late had won to immortality.

Thy sons shall come from far! The warm red blood That coursed so proudly through their manhood s veins, How many times hath left its vital stains About the trenches in the Flanders mud?

We make no moan for why should we lament That Britain s sons were greater than we guessed? Where alien earth hath cradled them to rest, A brighter day shall show the way they went.

And in the Spring the primroses shall peep In places where before they never grew ; And violets their perfumed purple strew Above the bed wherein our heroes sleep.

And daffodils shall trumpet to the morn A golden measure from each slender stem ; And poppies too shall breathe a requiem Among the quiet fields of ripened corn.

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