God made my mother on an April day
From sorrow and the mist along the sea,
Lost birds' and wanderers' songs and ocean spray,
And the moon loved her, wandering jealously....
Kind heart she has for all on hill or wave
Whose hopes grew wings, like ants, to fly away.
I bless the God Who such a mother gave
This poor bird-hearted singer of a day.
The war makes only a pensive undertone even in 'Evening Clouds,' with its vision of Rupert Brooke's grave:
A little flock of clouds go down to rest
In some blue corner of the moon's highway,
With shepherd winds that shook them in the west
To borrowed shapes of earth in bright array,
Perhaps to weave a rainbow's gay festoons
Around the lonesome isle which Brooke has made
A little England full of lovely noons,
Or dot it with his country's mountain shade.
Ledwidge proved himself a doughty soldier; his heart was in the war, though the war was not in his heart—there was no room in that for anything but his love of home and the treasures of peace for which he was fighting. His Helicon, like the Kingdom of Heaven, was within him;
