CANDLE-LIGHT is so mellow and warm
When a man comes in all hungry and cold,
Clotted with mud, or wet from the storm –
Only of candle-light you shall be told.
Of Madame’s brave, sad eagerness,
And French serenity of dress,
Her quiet, quick ways as she goes
To dry our heavy, sodden clothes
And bring all hot the great ragoût
That makes once more a man of you,
Her pains to help us put away
The sights that we have seen all day,
Her talk of kine and oats and rye
And François feats when but so high –
You’d never guess, did you not know,
He died for France three months ago.
And then there’s Marthe, whom he has left
(So proud, and yet so all bereft),
And Marie, with her hair in ties,
Looking at you with great round eyes
That make you wish to Heaven you were
The hero that you seem to her.
And last and least
There’s François’ little Jean-Baptiste,
For whom, deep slumbering in his cot,
All wounds and wars and deaths are not.
Such is the household every night
Illumined by the candle-light.
Search-lights are so blinding and white
The things they show you shall not hear,
Enough to see them; it is not right
We should tell of them too, my love, my dear.
Written for his wife by Charles J. B. Masefield, M. C., in France in 1916.
Published posthumously in 1919 by B. H. Blackwell of Broad Street, Oxford.