WHY is it that, although we settle down And live the lives we lived, a strange unrest, A something, haunts us as we work or play— A restlessness too vague to be expressed? Is it that we who, out there, walked with Death And knew the fellowship of fear and Pain, Are citizens for aye of No Man's Land, And never shall be as we were again? To those of us who played the game out there, And saw brave men, who failed to win, lose all Where Fate was dealer, Life and Death the stakes, Shall other games forevermore seem small? Ah, true that home is dear, that love is sweet, And pleasant are our friends to be among, Yet something lacks, to us from No Man's Land— Is it that no one here can speak our tongue? We cannot tell them what befell us there, For well we know they could not understand. So each sits quiet, by his own hearth fire, And sees therein the sights of No Man's Land! We have a secret way to judge of men— It is a way we learned to judge out there. But what, or how we learned it, none will tell— It is a secret that we cannot share! They feel our strangeness, too—those at our side Who chatter of the things of every day; They mark our silences, our strange reserve, "Ah, he is changed!" they shake their heads and say. They say the dead return not, but I think We know, who have come back from No Man's Land, How ghosts must feel, to walk familiar ways, And yet find no one there to understand! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TEARS AND KISSES by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON SPRING by GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS FAST ANCHOR'D ETERNAL O LOVE! by WALT WHITMAN THE BASE OF ALL METAPHYSICS by WALT WHITMAN THE SHOEMAKERS by JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER THE ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH: BOOK 1. AIR by JOHN ARMSTRONG |