Classic Poem

[ The Bandage-Makers ]

Now no longer is it lace
In the golden market-place,
Nor a little twilight street
Where the day-long neighbors meet: —
To and fro, and face to face,
Talk and shuttle, with the lace.

— Long ago, and gray and past!
But they need us now at last;
They are wanting us again,
All our men.

Now it is no longer nets,
Brown above the morning sea; —
Sea no one of us forgets,
Heeding never such as we!
Now no sails to make or mend;
Sails, sails, — ships to send
Out forever, to the end!

Other work and other web
Given to our hands again;
For the flood,
For the ebb,
(Turn and fold, and fold again,)
Drop by drop, of shining blood,
Life-blood that we gave our men.

Well for me, well for you,
Work is ever yet to do;
Web to wear the daylight through;
Work to do!

From his first of swaddling-bands,
In our hands. —
Now he hears, and understands.
All our spinning song complete,
So he have the winding-sheet.

Better so: the one refrain, —
Back to us, to us again!
All our master-building thus,
Back to us.

This to wind, and this to bathe;
Here, to lull with swathe on swathe;
So to staunch, and so to bind
Darkness softly on our blind. —

Hide away the ruin, frayed
From the bodies that we made:
Till that all things be fulfilled;
All our treasure spent and spilled;
With the darkening of the sun,
When the last of light is gone.
Kyrie eleison ,
Christe eleison!