C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Bernard Gilbert (1882–1927)

I WATCH and listen with a dreadful fear,

I wait and long and tremble in a breath;

Though he is gone to fight, yet is he near;

I have him always though he meet with Death:

In the lone night time when my eyes are dim

I cry with terror, yet my heart will sing;

I long, I long with sickness, yet with dread:

My fear is double—more, far more, for him

Who not yet lives than him who may be dead:

I carry that which masters everything:

And yet—to have his face and not his name,

To be so loved, so longed for, yet—my shame!

Gladness and dread alike my love to sting….

I bear his burden—but—I have no ring.