Poem of the Month - Mother's Day Julia Ward Howe 1870 The First Mother's Day was proclaimed over one hundred years ago by Julia Ward Howe.  A passionate demand for disarmament and peace.   Arise, then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have breasts, Whether our baptism be of water or of tears! Say […]

Part V

I know not whether laws be right,
Or whether laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.

Part IV There is no chapel on the day....On which they hang a man:The Chaplain's heart is far too sick,....Or his face is far too wan,Or there is that written in his eyes....Which none should look upon. So they kept us close till nigh on noon,....And then they rang the bell,And the Warders with their […]

Part III In Debtors' Yard the stones are hard,And the dripping wall is high,So it was there he took the airBeneath the leaden sky,And by each side a Warder walked,For fear the man might die. Or else he sat with those who watchedHis anguish night and day;Who watched him when he rose to weep,And when […]

Part II

Six weeks our guardsman walked the yard,
In the suit of shabby grey:
His cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay,
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.

Part I

He did not wear his scarlet coat,
...For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
....When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
.... And murdered in her bed.