WHO SLEEPS?

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 179, 2 June 1916, Page 3 (Supplement)

WHO SLEEPS?

Midnight and England; m the curtained room Shadow upon grey shadow creeps Till black, ail conquering, dominates the gloom, And darkness cries—who sleeps?

Who sleeps—the bride? She girt v.'.in for the light, Gay when her happy warrior went. Now empty arms she stretches to the night With passionate lament.

Who sleeps—the old man? Up the wind-swept street Hi? heard a brown battalion come; And all night long his weary, worn, old feet Keqi measure with the drum.

Who sleeps —the mother? Immemorial throes Torture her heart and laboured breath; This hour, it may be, her beloved goes Undaunted into death.

Who sleeps —the barren woman, £ or her breast Passion, nor pain, nor rapture stirs? She wakes and watches for the first and best, A thousand sons are hers.

On desolated far-off field*, who .sleeps? We know not, but through summer green, We know their r.gid hands, that hold, will keep The flag of England clean.

Who sleeps? Faint and forsworn, no sentinel Between the trenches snarling lips: Not one on guard where moonlit waters swell Under the battleships.

They sleep not for whom furnace smoke clouds roll, Nor they who forge for England's care Armour laid on tho anvil of her soul And hammered out with prayer.

Who sleeps—vour God on His eternal hill, And Zion falls, and Rachael weeps? Captain of hosts and our salvation still. He slumbers not nor sleeps. —ELAXOR ALEXANDER, in ''The Times."