Your hearts are lifted up, your hearts <br />That have foreknown the utter price. <br />Your hearts burn upward like a flame <br />Of splendour and of sacrifice. <br /> <br />For you, you too, to battle go, <br />Not with the marching drums and cheers <br />But in the watch of solitude <br />And through the boundless night of fears. <br /> <br />Swift, swifter than those hawks of war, <br />Those threatening wings that pulse the air, <br />Far as the vanward ranks are set, <br />You are gone before them, you are there! <br /> <br />And not a shot comes blind with death <br />And not a stab of steel is pressed <br />Home, but invisibly it tore <br />And entered first a woman's breast. <br /> <br />Amid the thunder of the guns, <br />The lightnings of the lance and sword <br />Your hope, your dread, your throbbing pride, <br />Your infinite passion is outpoured <br /> <br />From hearts that are as one high heart <br />Withholding naught from doom and bale <br />Burningly offered up,--to bleed, <br />To bear, to break, but not to fail!<br /><br />Robert Laurence Binyon<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-women-2/
