<html xmlns:tei="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0"><body><h1 align="center" class="head">Home</h1><p class="byline"> REGINALD WRIGHT KAUFFMAN <br xmlns:exist="http://exist.sourceforge.net/NS/exist" xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"/> From Mr. Kauffman's book of poems, "Little Old Belgium." Henry Altemus Company, Publishers, Philadelphia. Copyright, 1914. Reproduced in this book by special permission.</p><p class="epigraph"></p><p xmlns:exist="http://exist.sourceforge.net/NS/exist" xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">At a pillaged hamlet near Termonde, I asked a dying peasant woman into which of the houses still standing should assist her--which was her home? She pressed a withered hand to her bayonet-pierced side and answered: "The Germans have taken one home from me; but, without knowing it, they have given me another. I am going there now."</p><div class="stanza"><p class="line">My house that I so soon shall own </p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Is builded in a silent place, </p><p class="line">Not uncompanioned or alone,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">But shared by almost all my race; </p><p class="line">No landscape from its windows rolls</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">A picture of the earth's increase;</p><p class="line">But, oh, for all our stricken souls,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Within its sturdy walls is--Peace.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">The other house I used to love </p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Before they burnt it overhead; </p><p class="line">My slaughtered man; the memory of</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Our daughter screaming in the red </p><p class="line">Embrace of Uhlans at my door,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Her shrieks all silenced by their shout </p><p class="line">Of drunken fury--that was war,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">And my new home will shut it out.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">I shall not see the German hands</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">That tear the baby from the breast; </p><p class="line">I shall not hear the plundering bands</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Laughing at murder: I shall rest. </p><p class="line">There joy shall never riot in</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Nor robber sorrow find his way;</p><p class="line">Those shutters bar the call of Sin,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">And Duty has no debt to pay.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">So much I shall be heedless of,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Serene, secure, dispassionate;</p><p class="line"><em>There</em> is not anything to love;</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%"><em>There</em> is not anything to hate.</p><p class="line">So in my house I shall forget </p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">All of the orgies and the strife, </p><p class="line">And find, past memory and regret,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">The Resurrection and the Life. </p></div></body></html> · Great War