HOME COMING [A]"They will fight until the stolen and lost and scattered children return home.”

T’ will be a great day for the Children, The lost and scattered Children, When they come home! I can see now the little faces smiling, Hear broken words, see baby hands beguiling, And watch the dear processions straggled filing, When the Children come. In all the crushed, insulted, stricken households, In all the bare and desecrated households There will be joy. Mothers will rouse them from their haunted sorrow, Because their love has given the Tomorrow A pledge, on which posterity may borrow From girl and boy. Mothers will rouse them from their stricken anguish, Daring to face the future in their anguish, Because the Children say, “We have no part in all the hopeless killing; We are your sacrament, your holy willing; We are your cups for the glad, new wine-filling Of a new Day.” T’will be a great day for the Future, The dim and broken Future, When the Children come! They will bring back some clean, unlooted treasure; New hope in life, of love a higher measure; Unselfish aim, and purer, keener, pleasure When they come home. I see them dazed, the little bare feet stumbling; I see them hasten, stunned, confused, and stumbling— Yet unafraid. For one great People comes to bring them gladness; To take away the pitiful child-sadness; To heal the infant pain and baby madness— Another People made. On one side wait the agonizing mothers, The tearless, outraged, consecrated mothers, To see them come; The other side is lined with silent fathers, Dead, mutilated, tortured, murdered fathers, Sacred, elect, regenerated fathers, Who died for Home. And with them march the gay and ready Strangers, The sunny, stern Americans, the Strangers, Who bid them come. Yea, though my eyes be blind with bitter crying, Yet do I count worth while the fearful dying; When dead men on a hundred red fields lying Send the children—Home!