Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967). Picture-Show. 1920.

29. To a Childless Woman

YOU think I cannot understand. Ah, but I do…

I have been wrung with anger and compassion for you.

I wonder if you’d loathe my pity, if you knew.

But you shall know. I’ve carried in my heart too long

This secret burden. Has not silence wrought your wrong—

Brought you to dumb and wintry middle-age, with grey

Unfruitful withering?—Ah, the pitiless things I say…

What do you ask your God for, at the end of day,

Kneeling beside your bed with bowed and hopeless head?

What mercy can He give you?—Dreams of the unborn

Children that haunt your soul like loving words unsaid—

Dreams, as a song half-heard through sleep in early morn?

I see you in the chapel, where you bend before

The enhaloed calm of everlasting Motherhood

That wounds your life; I see you humbled to adore

The painted miracle you’ve never understood.

Tender, and bitter-sweet, and shy, I’ve watched you holding

Another’s child. O childless woman, was it then

That, with an instant’s cry, your heart, made young again,

Was crucified for ever—those poor arms enfolding

The life, the consummation that had been denied you?

I too have longed for children. Ah, but you must not weep.

Something I have to whisper as I kneel beside you…

And you must pray for me before you fall asleep.