About Me

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I am Miss Pancake Taylor. I have come from very far away to take care of my family Craig and Zita and Niamh and Emmet. Sometimes I have helpers; my friends the Blackthorn-Badgers. They are very old Scotsmen. I am very glad to meet you.

Tuesday, 12 March 2013

To a Soldier in Hospital


COURAGE came to you with your boyhood’s grace   
    Of ardent life and limb.   
Each day new dangers steeled you to the test,   
    To ride, to climb, to swim.   
Your hot blood taught you carelessness of death            

        With every breath.   

So when you went to play another game   
    You could not but be brave:   
An Empire’s team, a rougher football field,   
    The end—perhaps your grave.            

What matter? On the winning of a goal   
        You staked your soul.   

Yes, you wore courage as you wore your youth   
    With carelessness and joy.   
But in what Spartan school of discipline            

    Did you get patience, boy?   
How did you learn to bear this long-drawn pain   
        And not complain?   

Restless with throbbing hopes, with thwarted aims,   
    Impulsive as a colt,            

How do you lie here month by weary month   
    Helpless, and not revolt?   
What joy can these monotonous days afford   
        Here in a ward?   

Yet you are merry as the birds in spring,            

    Or feign the gaiety,   
Lest those who dress and tend your wound each day   
    Should guess the agony.   
Lest they should suffer—this the only fear   
        You let draw near.            


Greybeard philosophy has sought in books   
    And argument this truth,   
That man is greater than his pain, but you   
    Have learnt it in your youth.   
You know the wisdom taught by Calvary            

        At twenty-three.   

Death would have found you brave, but braver still   
    You face each lagging day,   
A merry Stoic, patient, chivalrous,   
    Divinely kind and gay.            

You bear your knowledge lightly, graduate   
        Of unkind Fate.   

Careless philosopher, the first to laugh,   
    The latest to complain,   
Unmindful that you teach, you taught me this            

    In your long fight with pain:   
Since God made man so good—here stands my creed—   
        God’s good indeed.   



Winifred M. Letts
 

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