MOTHERHOOD.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVII, Issue 12, 14 May 1915, Page 3

MOTHERHOOD.

By Mrs Hutli Jackson, in the “Englisli Review.” Through days and nights of weariness we bear them, And we pray to' all our gods that we may die As we crouch before the terror and the torture When the agonies of hell draw nigh. And we see the little heads laid besidg us. Too crushed are we to know that they are there, And the days pass slowly in the darkness Ere we live enough to care. And then as healing time lays hands upon ns The mother-love wakes—first a current slow, But day by day it grows in force and passion As childhood passes o’er them; and we know That every treasured‘morn that passes by ns Brings nearer the dark moment that we fear, When our sons go forth to fight for tlie Empire, And the last farewells are here. It is we who lie and listen in tlie trenches When the shell hursts like the thunder overhead ; It is we who turn the piteous faces over In the search for the living and the dead; It is wo who stand and hoar the sentries calling As they pace through the wind and the rain— We who hear the broken roll-call, and the silence For the names that will never come again. Yet we send them forth our husbands and our brothers, And the sons whom in our travail wo have borne, And wo smile to see our soldiers starting singing. Though our hearts in twain are lorn. There are those whom in our anguish we can pity, Whose sorrow is more tragic than onr woe, Not the mothers whose sons lie upon the death field, But the mothers who have sons who dare not go!