Dedication, Dec. 1939

When war was memory, and not a threat
When we looked forward to a life in peace
No boundaries to our happiness seemed set
Our joys seemed taken on a lifetime's lease

Then I last made for you a book of verse
Itself as trifling as the time and mood
Now here again my numbers I rehearse
But now we're tangled in Death's interlude

The written word remains, all else is grass
And wars and leaders withered in a day
When all this ghastly memory shall pass
May these lines only bring us back today

⋜ 1939

NOTES

• Verse 2 refers to the 'Poems for Peggy' collection, written earlier
• In one version in Papers the poem seems to have a title the same as the first line: 'When all seemed peaceful as a summer's day' but the poem is then used as the Dedication, as above, without the first line