Poems (Tree)/Of All Who Died in Silence Far Away

by Iris Tree

OF all who died in silence far away
Where sympathy was busy with other things,
Busy with worlds, inventing how to slay,
Troubled with rights and wrongs and governments and kings.

The little dead who knew so large a love,
Whose lives were sweet unto themselves a shepherding
Of hopes, ambitions, wonders in a drove
Over the hills of time, that now are graves for burying.

Of all the tenderness that flowed to them,
A milky way streaming from out their mother's breast,
Stars were they to her night, and she the stem
From which they flowered—now barren and left unblessed.

Of all the sparkling kisses that they gave
Spangling a secret radiance on adoring hands,
Now stifled in the darkness of a grave
With kiss of loneliness and death's embracing bands.

No more!—And we, the mourners, dare not wear
The black that folds our hearts in secrecy of pain,
But must don purple and bright standards bear,
Vermilion of our honour, a bloody train.

We dare not weep who must be brave in battle—
"Another death—another day—another inch of land—
The dead are cheering and the ghost drums rattle". . .
The dead are deaf and dumb and cannot understand. . . .

Of all who died in darkness far away
Nothing is left of them but love, who triumphs now,
His arms held crosswise to the budding day,
The passion-red roses clustering his brow.

1917