While The Billy BoilsSearchThey dragged me out of No Man’s Land.The earth and sky have ceased to reel;I’ve felt the sister’s steady hand,I’ve felt the surgeon’s steadier steel.I’m beat with bullet, shocked with shell,A thousand tortures with me toyed;Yet like our happy marriage bellI hear your voice across the void.O, Mary, namesake of the saintA hundred million men revere,I hear to-night, afar and faint —“Ave Maria,Ave Maria!”
I hear it as you sang it firstWithin our little Aussie home;I hear it in the shrapnel burstAnd bombs that drop from out the dome.Sacredly-sweet it floats againFrom out your soul full-throated flung,When life had not a pang or painAnd we and all the world were young.You sang because you loved to sing,The angels sure must hover near,When sweet your flute-notes rise and ring“Ave Maria,Ave Maria!”
Soft-handed sisters touch my ownIn passing where I lonely lie,And close my ears unto the groanOf dear old comrades soon to die.And in a church-yard near the wards,A peasant French girl sings to meOf homely gardens, lakes and swards,That I again shall never see.But while she’s singing to the sun,One song alone I wish to hear —The melody that made us one,“Ave Maria,Ave Maria!”
They tell me I will never see,My wife, my babies, or the world;That I in Stygian dark shall be,Until the judgements fiat’s hurled.They tell me vision shall not comeTo me until God lifts His light,Where there shall be no battle drumAnd man shall not his fellow smite.But you shall take me by the handAnd make confusing pathways clear,While storm-swept souls shall understand —“Ave Maria,Ave Maria!”
When I have left the transport’s side,Back, back again within the West,When I have clasped my bonny brideAnd babies to my broken breast,Then shall I by the sleepy SwanAsk it again of you, dear heart,As when our sweetheart sunbeams shone,And we were joined no more to part;So when the world casts off its gyves,Though sightless I shall happy hearThe hymn of our united lives —“Ave Maria,Ave Maria!”