Page:Poems of the Great War - Cunliffe.djvu/136

 110 BERNARD GILBERT

��"I HAVE NO RING"

I WATCH and listen with a dreadful fear, I wait and long and tremble in a breath ; Though he is gone to fight, yet is he near ; I have him always though he meet with Death : In the lone night time when my eyes are dim I cry with terror, yet my heart will sing ; I long, I long with sickness, yet with dread : My fear is double — more, far more, for him Who not yet lives than him who may be dead : I carry that which masters everything : And yet — to have his face and not his name, To be so loved, so longed for, yet — my shame ! Gladness and dread alike my love to sting. . . . I bear his burden — but — I have no ring.

— Bernard Gilbert.

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