Page:Flower of youth, poems in war time, Tynan, 1915.djvu/77

Rh THE SAD SPRING

Spring weeps, she is forlorn;

Well that she may weep, alas!

Now that many babes are born

Whose dear fathers lie in grass.

Snowdrops in the frozen earth

Faint and are not comforted;

Never was so sad a birth,

Never was so sad a bed.

She must bear her pangs alone.

Where is sorrow like to hers?

In an anguish cold as stone

Her dead soldier's child she bears.

Now her trembling arms will hold

Close the piteous downy thing

To a milky breast as cold

As the frozen water-spring.

Now she hopes and dreads to find

Likeness in the little son

To his father, brave and kind.

Like or not, her heart's undone.