Katharine Tynan

A Colloquy

  For M. W.

'When you get to Heaven, seek and find my boy.
Mother him!' 'Until you come?' 'I shall never come.
Earth was good enough for me who had all my joy
In my Love, my Light of home.

'But to him be given, in overflowing measure,
All the joys your Heaven can give if your God be just!
He, my boy slain in his youth to serve some mad king's pleasure
And his dreams and hopes in dust.'

'How shall I know him where so many boys are?
Multitudes and multitudes ever they increase.'
'Oh, my boy is young and tall, with bird-russet hair
And quiet eyes of peace.

'He who was killed in a quarrel not his own!
All his days he had good-will to his fellow-men.
Oh, your God is kind and just, shall He not atone
And the dark ways be made plain?

'Seek my son and find him, so he shall not miss
Me, his mother-comrade, through his length of days.'
'Oh, but he would turn from a strange woman's kiss
And ask where his mother delays.

'So be up and going for the way's not long!
God who kissed His Mother dear, a Babe in Nazareth,
Knows how they need mother-love, the dear and precious young,
In the new Life where is no Death.'