| YOU think I cannot understand. Ah, but I do... | |
| I have been wrung with anger and compassion for you. | |
| I wonder if you’d loathe my pity, if you knew. | |
| |
| But you shall know. I’ve carried in my heart too long | |
| This secret burden. Has not silence wrought your wrong— | 5 |
| Brought you to dumb and wintry middle-age, with grey | |
| Unfruitful withering?—Ah, the pitiless things I say... | |
| |
| What do you ask your God for, at the end of day, | |
| Kneeling beside your bed with bowed and hopeless head? | |
| What mercy can He give you?—Dreams of the unborn | 10 |
| Children that haunt your soul like loving words unsaid— | |
| Dreams, as a song half-heard through sleep in early morn? | |
| |
| I see you in the chapel, where you bend before | |
| The enhaloed calm of everlasting Motherhood | |
| That wounds your life; I see you humbled to adore | 15 |
| The painted miracle you’ve never understood. | |
| |
| Tender, and bitter-sweet, and shy, I’ve watched you holding | |
| Another’s child. O childless woman, was it then | |
| That, with an instant’s cry, your heart, made young again, | |
| Was crucified for ever—those poor arms enfolding | 20 |
| The life, the consummation that had been denied you? | |
| I too have longed for children. Ah, but you must not weep. | |
| Something I have to whisper as I kneel beside you... | |
| And you must pray for me before you fall asleep. | |
