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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Treasury of War Poetry
+by Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
+this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
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+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
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+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: A Treasury of War Poetry
+       British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917
+
+Author: Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
+
+Release Date: September, 2005 [EBook #8820]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on August 11, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A TREASURY OF WAR POETRY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RIVERSIDE LITERATURE SERIES
+
+
+A TREASURY OF
+WAR POETRY
+
+
+BRITISH AND AMERICAN POEMS
+OF THE WORLD WAR
+1914-1917
+
+
+Edited, With Introduction And Notes, By
+GEORGE HERBERT CLARKE
+Professor of English in the University of Tennessee
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+I. AMERICA
+
+
+RUDYARD KIPLING:  The Choice
+
+HENRY VAN DYKE:  "Liberty Enlightening the World"
+
+ROBERT BRIDGES:  To the United States of America
+
+VACHEL LINDSAY:  Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight
+
+JEANNE ROBERT FOSTER:  The "William P. Frye"
+
+
+II. ENGLAND AND AMERICA
+
+
+FLORENCE T. HOLT:  England and America
+
+LIEUTENANT CHARLES LANGBRIDGE MORGAN:  To America
+
+HELEN GRAY CONE:  A Chant of Love for England
+
+HARDWICKE DRUMMOND RAWNSLEY:  At St. Paul's: April 20, 1917
+
+ROWLAND THIRLMERE:  Jimmy Doane
+
+ALFRED NOYES:  Princeton, May, 1917
+
+
+III. ENGLAND
+
+
+SIR HENRY NEWBOLT:  The Vigil
+
+RUDYARD KIPLING:  "For All we Have and Are"
+
+JOHN GALSWORTHY:  England to Free Men
+
+SIR OWEN SEAMAN:  _Pro Patria_
+
+GEORGE HERBERT CLARKE:  Lines Written in Surrey, 1917
+
+
+IV. FRANCE
+
+
+CECIL CHESTERTON:  _France_
+
+HENRY VAN DYKE:  The Name of France
+
+CHARLOTTE HOLMES CRAWFORD:  _Vive la France!_
+
+THEODOSIA GARRISON:  The Soul of Jeanne d'Arc
+
+EDGAR LEE MASTERS:  O Glorious France
+
+HERBERT JONES:  To France
+
+FLORENCE EARLE COATES:  Place de la Concorde
+
+CANON AND MAJOR FREDERICK GEORGE SCOTT:  To France
+
+GRACE ELLERY CHANNING:  _Qui Vive?_
+
+
+V. BELGIUM
+
+
+LAURENCE BINYON:  To the Belgians
+
+EDITH WHARTON:  Belgium
+
+EDEN PHILLPOTTS:  To Belgium
+
+SIR OWEN SEAMAN:  To Belgium in Exile
+
+GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON:  The Wife of Flanders
+
+
+VI. RUSSIA AND AMERICA
+
+
+JOHN GALSWORTHY:  Russia--America
+
+ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON:  To Russia New and Free
+
+
+VII. ITALY
+
+
+CLINTON SCOLLARD:  Italy in Arms
+
+GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY:  On the Italian Front, MCMXVI
+
+
+VIII. AUSTRALIA
+
+
+ARCHIBALD T. STRONG:  Australia to England
+
+
+IX. CANADA
+
+
+MARJORIE L. C. PICKTHALL:  Canada to England
+
+WILFRED CAMPBELL:  Langemarck at Ypres
+
+WILL H. OGILVIE:  Canadians
+
+
+X. LIÈGE
+
+
+STEPHEN PHILLIPS:  The Kaiser and Belgium
+
+DANA BURNET:  The Battle of Liège
+
+
+XI. VERDUN
+
+
+LAURENCE BINYON:  Men of Verdun
+
+EDEN PHILLPOTTS:  Verdun
+
+PATRICK R. CHALMERS:  Guns of Verdun
+
+
+XII. OXFORD
+
+
+WINIFRED M. LETTS:  The Spires of Oxford
+
+W. SNOW:  Oxford in War-Time
+
+TERTIUS VAN DYKE:  Oxford Revisited in War-Time
+
+
+XIII. REFLECTIONS
+
+
+GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY:  Sonnets Written in the Fall of 1914
+
+SIR HENRY NEWBOLT:  The War Films
+
+ALFRED NOYES:  The Searchlights
+
+PERCY MACKAYE:  Christmas: 1915
+
+THOMAS HARDY:  "Men who March Away"
+
+JOHN DRINKWATER:  We Willed it Not
+
+LIEUTENANT-COLONEL SIR RONALD ROSS:  The Death of Peace
+
+FLORENCE EARLE COATES:  In War-Time
+
+LAURENCE BINYON:  The Anvil
+
+WALTER DE LA MARE:  The Fool Rings his Bells
+
+JOHN FINLEY:  The Road to Dieppe
+
+W. MACNEILE DIXON:  To Fellow Travellers in Greece
+
+AUSTIN DOBSON:  "When there is Peace"
+
+ALFRED NOYES:  A Prayer in Time of War
+
+THOMAS HARDY:  Then and Now
+
+BARRY PAIN:  The Kaiser and God
+
+ROBERT GRANT:  The Superman
+
+EVERARD OWEN:  Three Hills
+
+
+XIV. INCIDENTS AND ASPECTS
+
+
+JOHN FREEMAN:  The Return
+
+GRACE FALLOW NORTON:  The Mobilization in Brittany
+
+SIR HENRY NEWBOLT:  The Toy Band
+
+SIR OWEN SEAMAN:  Thomas of the Light Heart
+
+MAURICE HEWLETT:  In the Trenches
+
+SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE:  The Guards Came Through
+
+WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS:  The Passengers of a Retarded Submersible
+
+LAURENCE BUTTON:  Edith Cavell
+
+HERBERT KAUFMAN:  The Hell-Gate of Soissons
+
+GEORGE HERBERT CLARKE:  The Virgin of Albert
+
+WILFRID WILSON GIBSON: Retreat
+
+SIR HENRY NEWBOLT: A Letter from the Front
+
+GRACE HAZARD CONKLING: Rheims Cathedral--1914
+
+
+XV. POETS MILITANT
+
+
+ALAN SEEGER: I Have a Rendezvous with Death
+
+LIEUTENANT RUPERT BROOKE: The Soldier
+
+CAPTAIN CHARLES HAMILTON SORLEY: _Expectans Expectavi_
+
+LIEUTENANT HERBERT ASQUITH: The Volunteer
+
+CAPTAIN JULIAN GRENFELL: Into Battle
+
+JAMES NORMAN HALL: The Cricketers of Flanders
+
+CAPTAIN CHARLES HAMILTON SORLEY: "All the Hills and Vales Along"
+
+CAPTAIN JAMES H. KNIGHT-ADKIN: No Man's Land
+
+ALAN SEEGER: Champagne, 1914-15
+
+CAPTAIN GILBERT FRANKAU: Headquarters
+
+LIEUTENANT E. WYNDHAM TENNANT: Home Thoughts from Laventie
+
+LIEUTENANT ROBERT ERNEST VERNÈDE: A Petition
+
+ROBERT NICHOLS: Fulfilment
+
+    The Day's March
+
+LIEUTENANT FREDERIC MANNING: The Sign
+
+    The Trenches
+
+LIEUTENANT HENRY WILLIAM HUTCHINSON: Sonnets
+
+CAPTAIN J. E. STEWART: The Messines Road
+
+PRIVATE A. N. FIELD: The Challenge of the Guns
+
+LIEUTENANT GEOFFREY HOWARD: The Beach Road by the Wood
+
+SERGEANT JOSEPH LEE: German Prisoners
+
+SERGEANT LESLIE COULSON: "--But a Short Time to Live"
+
+LIEUTENANT W. N. HODGSON: Before Action
+
+LIEUTENANT DYNELEY HUSSEY: Courage
+
+LIEUTENANT A. VICTOR RATCLIFFE: Optimism
+
+MAJOR SYDNEY OSWALD: The Battlefield
+
+CAPTAIN JAMES H. KNIGHT-ADKIN: "_On Les Aura!_"
+
+CORPORAL ALEXANDER ROBERTSON: To an Old Lady
+Seen at a Guest-House for Soldiers
+
+LIEUTENANT GILBERT WATERHOUSE: The Casualty
+Clearing Station
+
+LANCE-CORPORAL MALCOLM HEMPHREY: Hills of Home
+
+
+XVI. AUXILIARIES
+
+
+JOHN FINLEY: The Red Cross Spirit Speaks
+
+WINIFRED M. LETTS: Chaplain to the Forces
+
+EDEN PHILLPOTTS: Song of the Red Cross
+
+LAURENCE BINYON: The Healers
+
+THOMAS L. MARSON: The Red Cross Nurses
+
+
+XVII. KEEPING THE SEAS
+
+
+ALFRED NOYES: Kilmeny
+
+RUDYARD KIPLING: The Mine-Sweepers
+
+HENRY VAN DYKE: _Mare Liberum_
+
+LIEUTENANT PAUL BEWSHER: The Dawn Patrol
+
+REGINALD MCINTOSH CLEVELAND: Destroyers off Jutland
+
+C. FOX SMITH: British Merchant Service
+
+
+XVIII. THE WOUNDED
+
+
+WINIFRED M. LETTS:  To a Soldier in Hospital
+
+WILFRID WILSON GIBSON:  Between the Lines
+
+ROBERT HAVEN SCHAUFFLER:  The White Comrade
+
+ROBERT W. SERVICE:  Fleurette
+
+ROBERT FROST:  Not to Keep
+
+
+XIX. THE FALLEN
+
+
+LIEUTENANT RUPERT BROOKE:  The Dead
+
+JOHN MASEFIELD:  The Island of Skyros
+
+LAURENCE BINYON:  For the Fallen
+
+CAPTAIN CHARLES HAMILTON SORLEY:  Two Sonnets
+
+WALTER DE LA MARE:  "How Sleep the Brave!"
+
+EDWARD VERRALL LUCAS:  The Debt
+
+CANON AND MAJOR FREDERICK GEORGE SCOTT:  _Requiescant_
+
+LIEUTENANT ROBERT ERNEST VERNÈDE:  To our Fallen
+
+KATHARINE TYNAN:  The Old Soldier
+
+ROBERT BRIDGES:  Lord Kitchener
+
+JOHN HELSTON:  Kitchener
+
+LIEUTENANT HERBERT ASQUITH:  The Fallen Subaltern
+
+F. W. BOURDILLON:  The Debt Unpayable
+
+WILFRID WILSON GIBSON:  The Messages
+
+G. ROSTREVOR HAMILTON:  A Cross in Flanders
+
+HERMANN HAGEDORN:  Resurrection
+
+OSCAR C. A. CHILD:  To a Hero
+
+MORAY DALTON:  Rupert Brooke (In Memoriam)
+
+FRANCIS BICKLEY: The Players
+
+CHARLES ALEXANDER RICHMOND: A Song
+
+
+XX. WOMEN AND WAR
+
+
+JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY: Harvest Moon
+
+JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY: Harvest Moon: 1916
+
+ADA TYRRELL: My Son
+
+KATHARINE TYNAN: To the Others
+
+GRACE FALLOW NORTON: The Journey
+
+MARGARET PETERSON: A Mother's Dedication
+
+EDEN PHILLPOTTS: To a Mother
+
+SARA TEASDALE: Spring In War-Time
+
+
+OCCASIONAL NOTES
+
+
+INDEXES
+
+
+
+
+ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
+
+
+The Editor desires to express his cordial appreciation of the assistance
+rendered him in his undertaking by the officials of the British Museum
+(Mr. F.D. Sladen, in particular); Professor W. Macneile Dixon, of the
+University of Glasgow; Professor Kemp Smith, of Princeton University;
+Miss Esther C. Johnson, of Needham, Massachusetts; and Mr. Francis
+Bickley, of London. He wishes also to acknowledge the courtesies
+generously extended by the following authors, periodicals, and
+publishers in granting permission for the use of the poems indicated,
+rights in which are in each case reserved by the owner of the
+copyright:--
+
+Mr. Francis Bickley and the _Westminster Gazette_:--"The Players."
+
+Mr. F.W. Bourdillon and the _Spectator_:--"The Debt Unpayable."
+
+Dr. Robert Bridges and the London _Times_:--"Lord Kitchener," and "To
+the United States of America."
+
+Mr. Dana Burnet and the New York _Evening Sun_:--"The Battle of Liège."
+
+Mr. Wilfred Campbell and the Ottawa _Evening Journal_:--"Langemarck at
+Ypres."
+
+Mr. Patrick R. Chalmers and _Punch_:--"Guns of Verdun."
+
+Mr. Cecil Chesterton and _The New Witness_:--"France."
+
+Mr. Oscar C.A. Child and _Harper's Magazine_:--"To a Hero."
+
+Mr. Reginald McIntosh Cleveland and the _New York Times_:--"Destroyers
+off Jutland."
+
+Miss Charlotte Holmes Crawford and _Scribner's Magazine_:--"_Vive la
+France!_"
+
+Mr. Moray Dalton and the _Spectator_:--"Rupert Brooke."
+
+Lord Desborough and the London _Times_:--"Into Battle," by the late
+Captain Julian Grenfell.
+
+Professor W. Macneile Dixon and the London _Times_:--"To Fellow
+Travellers in Greece,"
+
+Mr. Austin, Dobson and the _Spectator_:--"'When There Is Peace;'"
+
+Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the London _Times_:--"The Guards Came
+Through."
+
+Mr. John Finley and the _Atlantic Monthly_:--"The Road to Dieppe"; Mr.
+Finley, the American Red Cross, and the _Red Cross Magazine_:--"The Red
+Cross Spirit Speaks."
+
+Mr. John Freeman and the _Westminster Gazette_:--"The Return."
+
+Mr. Robert Frost and the _Yale Review_:--"Not to Keep."
+
+Mr. John Galsworthy and the _Westminster Gazette_:--"England to Free
+Men"; Mr. Galsworthy and the London _Chronicle_:--"Russia--America."
+
+Mrs. Theodosia Garrison and _Scribner's Magazine_:--"The Soul of Jeanne
+d'Arc."
+
+Lady Glenconner and the London _Times_:--"Home Thoughts from Laventie,"
+by the late Lieutenant E. Wyndham Tennant.
+
+Mr. Robert Grant and the _Nation_ (New York):--"The Superman."
+
+Mr. Hermann Hagedorn and the _Century Magazine_:--"Resurrection."
+
+Mr. James Norman Hall and the _Spectator_:--"The Cricketers of
+Flanders."
+
+Mr. Thomas Hardy and the London _Times_:--"Men Who March Away," and
+"Then and Now."
+
+Mr. John Helston and the _English Review_:--"Kitchener."
+
+Mr. Maurice Hewlett:--"In the Trenches," from _Sing-Songs of the War_
+(The Poetry Bookshop).
+
+Dr. A. E. Hillard:--"The Dawn Patrol," by Lieutenant Paul Bewsher.
+
+Mrs. Katharine Tynan Hinkson:--"To the Others" and "The Old Soldier."
+
+Mrs. Florence T. Holt and the _Atlantic Monthly_:--"England and
+America."
+
+Mr. William Dean Howells and the _North American Review_:--"The
+Passengers of a Retarded Submersible."
+
+Lady Hutchinson:--"Sonnets," by the late Lieutenant Henry William
+Hutchinson.
+
+Mr. Robert Underwood Johnson:--"To Russia New and Free," from _Poems of
+War and Peace_, published by the author.
+
+Mr. Rudyard Kipling:--"The Choice"; "'For All we Have and Are'"; and
+"The Mine-Sweepers." (Copyright, 1914, 1915, 1917, by Rudyard Kipling.)
+
+Captain James H. Knight-Adkin and the _Spectator_;--"No Man's Land" and
+"_On Les Aura!_"
+
+Sergeant Joseph Lee and the _Spectator_:--"German Prisoners."
+
+Mr. E. V. Lucas and the _Sphere_:--"The Debt."
+
+Mr. Walter de la Mare and the London _Times_:--"'How Sleep the Brave!'";
+Mr. de la Mare and the _Westminster Gazette_:--"The Fool Rings his
+Bells."
+
+Mr. Edward Marsh, literary executor of the late Rupert Brooke:--"The
+Soldier" and "The Dead."
+
+Mr. Thomas L. Masson:--"The Red Cross Nurses," from the _Red Cross
+Magazine_.
+
+Lieutenant Charles Langbridge Morgan and the _Westminster Gazette_:--"To
+America."
+
+Sir Henry Newbolt:--"The Vigil"; "The War Films"; "The Toy Band," and "A
+Letter from the Front."
+
+Mr. Alfred Noyes:--"Princeton, May, 1917"; "The Searchlights" (London
+_Times_), "A Prayer in Time of War" (London _Daily Mail_), and
+"Kilmeny."
+
+Mr. Will H. Ogilvie:--"Canadians."
+
+Mr. Barry Pain and the London _Times_:--"The Kaiser and God."
+
+Miss Marjorie Pickthall and the London _Times_:--"Canada to England."
+
+Canon H.D. Dawnsley and the _Westminster Gazette_:--"At St. Paul's,
+April 20, 1917."
+
+Dr. Charles Alexander Richmond:--"A Song."
+
+Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Ronald Ross and the _Poetry Review_:--"The Death
+of Peace."
+
+Mr. Robert Haven Schauffler:--"The White Comrade."
+
+Mr. W. Snow and the _Spectator_:--"Oxford in War-Time."
+
+Mrs. Grace Ellery Channing Stetson and the New York _Tribune_:--"_Qui
+Vive_?"
+
+Mr. Rowland Thirlmere and the _Poetry Review_:--"Jimmy Doane."
+
+Mrs. Ada Turrell and the _Saturday Review_:--"My Son."
+
+Dr. Henry van Dyke and the London _Times_:--"Liberty Enlightening the
+World," and "_Mare Liberum_"; Dr. van Dyke and the _Art World_: "The
+Name of France."
+
+Mr. Tertius van Dyke and the _Spectator_:--"Oxford Revisited in
+War-Time."
+
+Mrs. Edith Wharton:--"Belgium," from _King Albert's Book_ (Hearst's
+International Library Company).
+
+Mr. George Edward Woodberry and the _Boston Herald_:--"On the Italian
+Front, MCMXVI"; Mr. Woodberry, the _New York Times_ and the _North
+American Review_:--"Sonnets Written in the Fall of 1914."
+
+_The Athenaeum_:--"A Cross in Flanders," by G. Rostrevor Hamilton.
+
+_The Poetry Review_:--"The Messines Road," by Captain J.E. Stewart; "--
+But a Short Time to Live," by the late Sergeant Leslie Coulson.
+
+_The Spectator_:--"The Challenge of the Guns," by Private A.N. Field.
+
+The London _Times_:--"To Our Fallen" and "A Petition," by the late
+Lieutenant Robert Ernest Vernède.
+
+The _Westminster Gazette_:--"Lines Written in Surrey, 1917," by George
+Herbert Clarke.
+
+Messrs. Barse & Hopkins:--"Fleurette," by Robert W. Service.
+
+The Cambridge University Press and Professor William R. Sorley:--
+"_Expectans Expectavi_"; "'All the Hills and Vales Along,'" and "Two
+Sonnets," by the late Captain Charles Hamilton Sorley, from _Marlborough
+and Other Poems_.
+
+Messrs. Chatto & Windus:--"Fulfilment" and "The Day's March," by Robert
+Nichols.
+
+Messrs. Constable & Company:--"Pro Patria," "Thomas of the Light Heart,"
+and "To Belgium in Exile," by Sir Owen Seaman, from _War-Time_; "To
+France" and "_Requiescant_," by Canon and Major Frederick George Scott,
+from _In the Battle Silences_.
+
+Messrs. E. P. Dutton & Company:--"To a Soldier in Hospital" (the
+_Spectator_); "Chaplain to the Forces" and "The Spires of Oxford"
+(_Westminster Gazette_), by Winifred M. Letts, from _Hallowe'en, and
+Poems of the War_; "A Chant of Love for England," by Helen Gray Cone,
+from _A Chant of Love for England, and Other Poems_ (published also by
+J.M. Dent & Sons, Limited, London).
+
+Lawrence J. Gomme:--"Italy in Arms," by Clinton Scollard, from _Italy in
+Arms, and Other Poems_.
+
+Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Company:--"To the Belgians"; "Men of Verdun";
+"The Anvil"; "Edith Cavell"; "The Healers" and "For the Fallen," by
+Laurence Binyon, from _The Cause_ (published also by Elkin Mathews,
+London, in _The Anvil_ and _The Winnowing Fan_); "Headquarters," by
+Captain Gilbert Frankau, from _A Song of the Guns_; "Place de la
+Concorde" and "In War-Time," by Florence Earle Coates, from _The
+Collected Poems of Florence Earle Coates_; "Harvest Moon" and "Harvest
+Moon, 1915," by Josephine Preston Peabody, from _Harvest Moon_; "The
+Mobilization in Brittany" and "The Journey," by Grace Fallow Norton,
+from _Roads_, and "Rheims Cathedral--1914," by Grace Hazard Conkling,
+from _Afternoons of April_.
+
+John Lane:--"The Kaiser and Belgium," by the late Stephen Phillips.
+
+The John Lane Company:--"The Wife of Flanders," by Gilbert K.
+Chesterton, from _Poems_ (published also by Messrs. Burns and Gates,
+London); "The Soldier," and "The Dead," by the late Lieutenant Rupert
+Brooke, from _The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke_ (published also by
+Messrs. Sidgwick & Jackson, London, in _19l4, and Other Poems_).
+
+Erskine Macdonald:--The following poems from _Soldier Poets_:--"The
+Beach Road by the Wood," by Lieutenant Geoffrey Howard; "Before Action,"
+by the late Lieutenant W.N. Hodgson ("Edward Melbourne"); "Courage," by
+Lieutenant Dyneley Hussey; "Optimism," by Lieutenant A. Victor
+Ratcliffe; "The Battlefield," by Major Sidney Oswald; "To an Old Lady
+Seen at a Guest-House for Soldiers," by Corporal Alexander Robertson;
+"The Casualty Clearing Station," by Lieutenant Gilbert Waterhouse; and
+"Hills of Home," by Lance-Corporal Malcolm Hemphrey.
+
+The Macmillan Company:--"To Belgium"; "Verdun"; "To a Mother," and "Song
+of the Red Cross," by Eden Phillpotts, from _Plain Song, 1914-1916_
+(published also by William Heinemann, London); "The Island of Skyros,"
+by John Masefield; "Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight," from _The Congo
+and Other Poems_, by Vachel Lindsay; "O Glorious France," by Edgar Lee
+Masters, from _Songs and Satires_; "Christmas, 1915," from _Poems and
+Plays_, by Percy MacKaye; "The Hellgate of Soissons," by Herbert
+Kaufman, from _The Hellgate of Soissons_; "Spring in War-Time," by Sara
+Teasdale, from _Rivers to the Sea_; and "Retreat," "The Messages," and
+"Between the Lines," by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson.
+
+Messrs. Macmillan & Company:--"Australia to England," by Archibald T.
+Strong, from _Sonnets of the Empire_, and "Men Who March Away," by
+Thomas Hardy, from _Satires of Circumstance_.
+
+Elkin Mathews:--"The British Merchant Service" (the _Spectator_), by C.
+Fox Smith, from _The Naval Crown_.
+
+John Murray:--"The Sign," and "The Trenches," by Lieutenant Frederic
+Manning.
+
+The Princeton University Press:--"To France," by Herbert Jones, from _A
+Book of Princeton Verse_.
+
+Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons:--"I Have a Rendezvous with Death," and
+"Champagne, 1914-1915," by the late Alan Seeger, from _Poems_.
+
+Messrs. Sherman, French & Company:--"The _William P. Frye_" (_New York
+Times_), by Jeanne Robert Foster, from _Wild Apples_.
+
+Messrs. Sidgwick & Jackson:--"We Willed It Not" (_The Sphere_), by John
+Drinkwater; "Three Hills" (London _Times_), by Everard Owen, from _Three
+Hills, and Other Poems_; "The Volunteer," and "The Fallen Subaltern," by
+Lieutenant Herbert Asquith, from _The Volunteer, and Other Poems_.
+
+Messrs. Truslove and Hanson:--"A Mother's Dedication," by Margaret
+Peterson, from _The Women's Message_.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+Because man is both militant and pacific, he has expressed in
+literature, as indeed in the other forms of art, his pacific and
+militant moods. Nor are these moods, of necessity, incompatible. War may
+become the price of peace, and peace may so decay as inevitably to bring
+about war. Of the dully unresponsive pacificist and the jingo patriot,
+quick to anger, the latter no doubt is the more dangerous to the cause
+of true freedom, yet both are "undesirable citizens." He who believes
+that peace is illusory and spurious, unless it be based upon justice and
+liberty, will be proud to battle, if battle he must, for the sake of
+those foundations.
+
+For the most part, the poetry of war, undertaken in this spirit, has
+touched and exalted such special qualities as patriotism, courage, self-
+sacrifice, enterprise, and endurance. Where it has tended to glorify war
+in itself, it is chiefly because war has released those qualities, so to
+speak, in stirring and spectacular ways; and where it has chosen to
+round upon war and to upbraid it, it is because war has slain ardent and
+lovable youths and has brought misery and despair to women and old
+people. But the war poet has left the mere arguments to others. For
+himself, he has seen and felt. Envisaging war from various angles, now
+romantically, now realistically, now as the celebrating chronicler, now
+as the contemplative interpreter, but always in a spirit of catholic
+curiosity, he has sung, the fall of Troy, the Roman adventures, the
+mediaeval battles and crusades, the fields of Agincourt and Waterloo,
+and the more modern revolutions. Since Homer, he has spoken with martial
+eloquence through, the voices of Drayton, Spenser, Marlowe, Webster,
+Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Scott, Burns, Campbell, Tennyson, Browning,
+the New England group, and Walt Whitman,--to mention only a few of the
+British and American names,--and he speaks sincerely and powerfully
+to-day in the writings of Kipling. Hardy, Masefield, Binyon, Newbolt,
+Watson, Rupert Brooke, and the two young soldiers--the one English, the
+other American--who have lately lost their lives while on active
+service: Captain Charles Hamilton Sorley, who was killed at Hulluch,
+October 18, 1915; and Alan Seeger, who fell, mortally wounded, during
+the charge on Belloy-en-Santerre, July 4, 1916.
+
+There can be little doubt that these several minds and spirits, stirred
+by the passion and energy of war, and reacting sensitively both to its
+cruelties and to its pities, have experienced the kinship of quickened
+insight and finer unselfishness in the face of wide-ranging death. They
+have silently compared, perhaps, the normal materialistic conventions in
+business, politics, education, and religion, with the relief from those
+conventions that nearly all soldiers and many civilians experience in
+time of war; for although war has its too gross and ugly side, it has
+not dared to learn that inflexibility of custom and conduct that deadens
+the spirit into a tame submission. This strange rebound and exaltation
+would seem to be due less to the physical realities of war--which must
+in many ways cramp and constrain the individual--than to the relative
+spiritual freedom engendered by the needs of war, if they are to be
+successfully met. The man of war has an altogether unusual opportunity
+to realize himself, to cleanse and heal himself through the mastering of
+his physical fears; through the facing of his moral doubts; through the
+reëxamination of whatever thoughts he may have possessed, theretofore,
+about life and death and the universe; and through the quietly unselfish
+devotion he owes to the welfare of his fellows and to the cause of his
+native land.
+
+Into the stuff of his thought and utterance, whether he be on active
+service or not, the poet-interpreter of war weaves these intentions, and
+coöperates with his fellows in building up a little higher and better,
+from time to time, that edifice of truth for whose completion can be
+spared no human experience, no human hope.
+
+As already suggested, English and American literatures have both
+received genuine accessions, even thus early, arising out of the present
+great conflict, and we may be sure that other equally notable
+contributions will be made. The present Anthology contains a number of
+representative poems produced by English-speaking men and women. The
+editorial policy has been humanly hospitable, rather than academically
+critical, especially in the case of some of the verses written by
+soldiers at the Front, which, however slight in certain instances their
+technical merit may be, are yet psychologically interesting as sincere
+transcripts of personal experience, and will, it is thought, for that
+very reason, peculiarly attract and interest the reader. It goes without
+saying that there are several poems in this group which conspicuously
+succeed also as works of art. For the rest, the attempt has been made,
+within such limitations as have been experienced, to present pretty
+freely the best of what has been found available in contemporary British
+and American war verse. It must speak for itself, and the reader will
+find that in not a few instances it does so with sensitive sympathy and
+with living power; sometimes, too, with that quietly intimate
+companionableness which we find in Gray's _Elegy_, and which John
+Masefield, while lecturing in America in 1916, so often indicated as a
+prime quality in English poetry. But if this quality appears in Chaucer
+and the pre-Romantics and Wordsworth, it appears also in Longfellow and
+Lowell, in Emerson and Lanier, and in William Vaughn Moody; for American
+poetry is, after all, as English poetry,--"with a difference,"--sprung
+from the same sources, and coursing along similar channels.
+
+The new fellowship of the two great Anglo-Saxon nations which a book of
+this character may, to a degree, illustrate, is filled with such high
+promise for both of them, and for all civilization, that it is perhaps
+hardly too much to say, with Ambassador Walter H. Page, in his address
+at the Pilgrims' Dinner in London, April 12, 1917: "We shall get out of
+this association an indissoluble companionship, and we shall henceforth
+have indissoluble mutual duties for mankind. I doubt if there could be
+another international event comparable in large value and in long
+consequences to this closer association." Mr. Balfour struck the same
+note when, during his mission to the United States, he expressed himself
+in these words: "That this great people should throw themselves whole-
+heartedly into this mighty struggle, prepared for all efforts and
+sacrifices that may be required to win success for this most righteous
+cause, is an event at once so happy and so momentous that only the
+historian of the future will be able, as I believe, to measure its true
+proportions."
+
+The words of these eminent men ratify in the field of international
+politics the hopeful anticipation which Tennyson expressed in his poem,
+_Hands all Round_, as it appeared in the London _Examiner_, February 7,
+1852:--
+
+"Gigantic daughter of the West,
+  We drink to thee across the flood,
+We know thee most, we love thee best,
+  For art thou not of British blood?
+Should war's mad blast again be blown,
+  Permit not thou the tyrant powers
+To fight thy mother here alone,
+  But let thy broadsides roar with ours.
+        Hands all round!
+  God the tyrant's cause confound!
+To our great kinsmen of the West, my friends,
+  And the great name of England, round and round.
+
+"O rise, our strong Atlantic sons,
+  When war against our freedom springs!
+O speak to Europe through your guns!
+  They can be understood by kings.
+You must not mix our Queen with those
+  That wish to keep their people fools;
+Our freedom's foemen are her foes,
+  She comprehends the race she rules.
+        Hands all round!
+  God the tyrant's cause confound!
+To our dear kinsmen of the West, my friends,
+  And the great cause of Freedom, round and round."
+
+They ratify also the spirit of those poems in the present volume which
+seek to interpret to Britons and Americans their deepening friendship.
+"Poets," said Shelley, "are the unacknowledged legislators of the
+world," and he meant by legislation the guidance and determination of
+the verdicts of the human soul.
+
+G. H. C.
+
+_August, 1917_
+
+
+
+
+THE CHOICE
+
+THE AMERICAN SPIRIT SPEAKS:
+
+
+To the Judge of Right and Wrong
+  With Whom fulfillment lies
+Our purpose and our power belong,
+  Our faith and sacrifice.
+
+Let Freedom's land rejoice!
+  Our ancient bonds are riven;
+Once more to us the eternal choice
+  Of good or ill is given.
+
+Not at a little cost,
+  Hardly by prayer or tears,
+Shall we recover the road we lost
+  In the drugged and doubting years,
+
+But after the fires and the wrath,
+  But after searching and pain,
+His Mercy opens us a path
+  To live with ourselves again.
+
+In the Gates of Death rejoice!
+  We see and hold the good--
+Bear witness, Earth, we have made our choice
+  For Freedom's brotherhood.
+
+Then praise the Lord Most High
+  Whose Strength hath saved us whole,
+Who bade us choose that the Flesh should die
+  And not the living Soul!
+
+_Rudyard Kipling_
+
+
+
+
+"LIBERTY ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD"
+
+
+Thou warden of the western gate, above Manhattan Bay,
+The fogs of doubt that hid thy face are driven clean away:
+Thine eyes at last look far and clear, thou liftest high thy hand
+To spread the light of liberty world-wide for every land.
+
+No more thou dreamest of a peace reserved alone for thee,
+While friends are fighting for thy cause beyond the guardian sea:
+The battle that they wage is thine; thou fallest if they fall;
+The swollen flood of Prussian pride will sweep unchecked o'er all.
+
+O cruel is the conquer-lust in Hohenzollern brains:
+The paths they plot to gain their goal are dark with shameful stains:
+No faith they keep, no law revere, no god but naked Might;--
+They are the foemen of mankind. Up, Liberty, and smite!
+
+Britain, and France, and Italy, and Russia newly born,
+Have waited for thee in the night. Oh, come as comes the morn.
+Serene and strong and full of faith, America, arise,
+With steady hope and mighty help to join thy brave Allies.
+
+O dearest country of my heart, home of the high desire,
+Make clean thy soul for sacrifice on Freedom's altar-fire:
+For thou must suffer, thou must fight, until the warlords cease,
+And all the peoples lift their heads in liberty and peace.
+
+_Henry van Dyke_
+
+_April 10, 1917_
+
+
+
+
+TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+Brothers in blood! They who this wrong began
+  To wreck our commonwealth, will rue the day
+  When first they challenged freemen to the fray,
+And with the Briton dared the American.
+Now are we pledged to win the Rights of man;
+  Labour and Justice now shall have their way,
+  And in a League of Peace--God grant we may--
+Transform the earth, not patch up the old plan.
+
+Sure is our hope since he who led your nation
+  Spake for mankind, and ye arose in awe
+Of that high call to work the world's salvation;
+    Clearing your minds of all estranging blindness
+  In the vision of Beauty and the Spirit's law,
+    Freedom and Honour and sweet Lovingkindness.
+
+_Robert Bridges_
+
+_April 30, 1917_
+
+
+
+
+ABRAHAM LINCOLN WALKS AT MIDNIGHT
+
+(IN SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS)
+
+
+It is portentous, and a thing of state
+That here at midnight, in our little town,
+A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,
+Near the old court-house pacing up and down,
+
+Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards
+He lingers where his children used to play;
+Or through the market, on the well-worn stones
+He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.
+
+A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black,
+A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl
+Make him the quaint great figure that men love,
+The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.
+
+He cannot sleep upon his hillside now.
+He is among us:--as in times before!
+And we who toss and lie awake for long
+Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door.
+
+His head is bowed. He thinks on men and kings.
+Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep?
+Too many peasants fight, they know not why,
+Too many homesteads in black terror weep.
+
+The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart.
+He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main.
+He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now
+The bitterness, the folly, and the pain.
+
+He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn
+Shall come;--the shining hope of Europe free:
+The league of sober folk, the Workers' Earth
+Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp, and Sea.
+
+It breaks his heart that kings must murder still,
+That all his hours of travail here for men
+Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace
+That he may sleep upon his hill again?
+
+_Vachel Lindsay_
+
+
+
+
+THE "WILLIAM P. FRYE"
+
+
+I saw her first abreast the Boston Light
+At anchor; she had just come in, turned head,
+And sent her hawsers creaking, clattering down.
+I was so near to where the hawse-pipes fed
+The cable out from her careening bow,
+I moved up on the swell, shut steam and lay
+Hove to in my old launch to look at her.
+She'd come in light, a-skimming up the Bay
+Like a white ghost with topsails bellying full;
+And all her noble lines from bow to stern
+Made music in the wind; it seemed she rode
+The morning air like those thin clouds that turn
+Into tall ships when sunrise lifts the clouds
+From calm sea-courses.
+
+There, in smoke-smudged coats,
+Lay funnelled liners, dirty fishing-craft,
+Blunt cargo-luggers, tugs, and ferry-boats.
+Oh, it was good in that black-scuttled lot
+To see the _Frye_ come lording on her way
+Like some old queen that we had half forgot
+Come to her own. A little up the Bay
+The Fort lay green, for it was springtime then;
+The wind was fresh, rich with the spicy bloom
+Of the New England coast that tardily
+Escapes, late April, from an icy tomb.
+The State-house glittered on old Beacon Hill,
+Gold in the sun.... 'T was all so fair awhile;
+But she was fairest--this great square-rigged ship
+That had blown in from some far happy isle
+On from the shores of the Hesperides.
+
+They caught her in a South Atlantic road
+Becalmed, and found her hold brimmed up with wheat;
+"Wheat's contraband," they said, and blew her hull
+To pieces, murdered one of our staunch fleet,
+Fast dwindling, of the big old sailing ships
+That carry trade for us on the high sea
+And warped out of each harbor in the States.
+It wasn't law, so it seems strange to me--
+A big mistake. Her keel's struck bottom now
+And her four masts sunk fathoms, fathoms deep
+To Davy Jones. The dank seaweed will root
+On her oozed decks, and the cross-surges sweep
+Through the set sails; but never, never more
+Her crew will stand away to brace and trim,
+Nor sea-blown petrels meet her thrashing up
+To windward on the Gulf Stream's stormy rim;
+Never again she'll head a no'theast gale
+Or like a spirit loom up, sliding dumb,
+And ride in safe beyond the Boston Light,
+To make the harbor glad because she's come.
+
+_Jeanne Robert Foster_
+
+
+
+
+ENGLAND AND AMERICA
+
+
+Mother and child! Though the dividing sea
+  Shall roll its tide between us, we are one,
+  Knit by immortal memories, and none
+But feels the throb of ancient fealty.
+A century has passed since at thy knee
+  We learnt the speech of freemen, caught the fire
+  That would not brook thy menaces, when sire
+And grandsire hurled injustice back to thee.
+
+But the full years have wrought equality:
+  The past outworn, shall not the future bring
+  A deeper union, from whose life shall spring
+Mankind's best hope? In the dark night of strife
+Men perished for their dream of Liberty
+Whose lives were given for this larger life.
+
+_Florence T. Holt_
+
+
+
+
+TO AMERICA
+
+
+When the fire sinks in the grate, and night has bent
+Close wings about the room, and winter stands
+Hard-eyed before the window, when the hands
+Have turned the book's last page and friends are sleeping,
+Thought, as it were an old stringed instrument
+Drawn to remembered music, oft does set
+The lips moving in prayer, for us fresh keeping
+Knowledge of springtime and the violet.
+
+And, as the eyes grow dim with many years,
+The spirit runs more swiftly than the feet,
+Perceives its comfort, knows that it will meet
+God at the end of troubles, that the dreary
+Last reaches of old age lead beyond tears
+To happy youth unending. There is peace
+In homeward waters, where at last the weary
+Shall find rebirth, and their long struggle cease.
+
+So, at this hour, when the Old World lies sick,
+Beyond the pain, the agony of breath
+Hard drawn, beyond the menaces of death,
+O'er graves and years leans out the eager spirit.
+First must the ancient die; then shall be quick
+New fires within us. Brother, we shall make
+Incredible discoveries and inherit
+The fruits of hope, and love shall be awake.
+
+_Charles Langbridge Morgan_
+
+
+
+
+A CHANT OF LOVE FOR ENGLAND
+
+
+A song of hate is a song of Hell;
+Some there be that sing it well.
+Let them sing it loud and long,
+We lift our hearts in a loftier song:
+We lift our hearts to Heaven above,
+Singing the glory of her we love,--
+          _England!_
+
+Glory of thought and glory of deed,
+Glory of Hampden and Runnymede;
+Glory of ships that sought far goals,
+Glory of swords and glory of souls!
+Glory of songs mounting as birds,
+Glory immortal of magical words;
+Glory of Milton, glory of Nelson,
+Tragical glory of Gordon and Scott;
+Glory of Shelley, glory of Sidney,
+Glory transcendent that perishes not,--
+Hers is the story, hers be the glory,
+            _England!_
+
+Shatter her beauteous breast ye may;
+The spirit of England none can slay!
+Dash the bomb on the dome of Paul's--
+Deem ye the fame of the Admiral falls?
+Pry the stone from the chancel floor,--
+Dream ye that Shakespeare shall live no more?
+Where is the giant shot that kills
+Wordsworth walking the old green hills?
+Trample the red rose on the ground,--
+Keats is Beauty while earth spins round!
+Bind her, grind her, burn her with fire,
+Cast her ashes into the sea,--
+She shall escape, she shall aspire,
+She shall arise to make men free:
+She shall arise in a sacred scorn,
+Lighting the lives that are yet unborn;
+Spirit supernal, Splendour eternal,
+              ENGLAND!
+
+_Helen Gray Cone_
+
+
+
+
+AT ST. PAUL'S
+
+APRIL 20, 1917
+
+
+Not since Wren's Dome has whispered with man's prayer
+  Have angels leaned to wonder out of Heaven
+  At such uprush of intercession given,
+Here where to-day one soul two nations share,
+And with accord send up thro' trembling air
+  Their vows to strive as Honour ne'er has striven
+  Till back to hell the Lords of hell are driven,
+And Life and Peace again shall flourish fair.
+
+This is the day of conscience high-enthroned,
+  The day when East is West and West is East
+    To strike for human Love and Freedom's word
+Against foul wrong that cannot be atoned;
+  To-day is hope of brotherhood's bond increased,
+    And Christ, not Odin, is acclaimed the Lord.
+
+_Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley_
+
+
+
+
+JIMMY DOANE
+
+
+Often I think of you, Jimmy Doane,--
+You who, light-heartedly, came to my house
+Three autumns, to shoot and to eat a grouse!
+
+As I sat apart in this quiet room,
+My mind was full of the horror of war
+And not with the hope of a visitor.
+
+I had dined on food that had lost its taste;
+My soul was cold and I wished you were here,--
+When, all in a moment, I knew you were near.
+
+Placing that chair where you used to sit,
+I looked at my book:--Three years to-day
+Since you laughed in that seat and I heard you say--
+
+"My country is with you, whatever befall:
+America--Britain--these two are akin
+In courage and honour; they underpin
+
+"The rights of Mankind!" Then you grasped my hand
+With a brotherly grip, and you made me feel
+Something that Time would surely reveal.
+
+You were comely and tall; you had corded arms,
+And sympathy's grace with your strength was blent;
+You were generous, clever, and confident.
+
+There was that in your hopes which uncountable lives
+Have perished to make; your heart was fulfilled
+With the breath of God that can never be stilled.
+
+A living symbol of power, you talked
+Of the work to do in the world to make
+Life beautiful: yes, and my heartstrings ache
+
+To think how you, at the stroke of War,
+Chose that your steadfast soul should fly
+With the eagles of France as their proud ally.
+
+You were America's self, dear lad--
+The first swift son of your bright, free land
+To heed the call of the Inner Command--
+
+To image its spirit in such rare deeds
+As braced the valour of France, who knows
+That the heart of America thrills with her woes.
+
+For a little leaven leavens the whole!
+Mostly we find, when we trouble to seek
+The soul of a people, that some unique,
+
+Brave man is its flower and symbol, who
+Makes bold to utter the words that choke
+The throats of feebler, timider folk.
+
+You flew for the western eagle--and fell
+Doing great things for your country's pride:
+For the beauty and peace of life you died.
+
+Britain and France have shrined in their souls
+Your memory; yes, and for ever you share
+Their love with their perished lords of the air.
+
+Invisible now, in that empty seat,
+You sit, who came through the clouds to me,
+Swift as a message from over the sea.
+
+My house is always open to you:
+Dear spirit, come often and you will find
+Welcome, where mind can foregather with mind!
+
+And may we sit together one day
+Quietly here, when a word is said
+To bring new gladness unto our dead,
+
+Knowing your dream is a dream no more;
+And seeing on some momentous pact
+Your vision upbuilt as a deathless fact.
+
+_Rowland Thirlmere_
+
+
+
+
+PRINCETON, MAY, 1917
+
+
+_Here Freedom stood by slaughtered friend and foe,
+And, ere the wrath paled or that sunset died,
+Looked through the ages; then, with eyes aglow,
+Laid them to wait that future, side by side._
+
+(Lines for a monument to the American and British soldiers
+of the Revolutionary War who fell on the Princeton
+battlefield and were buried in one grave.)
+
+Now lamp-lit gardens in the blue dusk shine
+  Through dogwood, red and white;
+And round the gray quadrangles, line by line,
+  The windows fill with light,
+Where Princeton calls to Magdalen, tower to tower,
+  Twin lanthorns of the law;
+And those cream-white magnolia boughs embower
+  The halls of "Old Nassau."
+
+The dark bronze tigers crouch on either side
+  Where redcoats used to pass;
+And round the bird-loved house where Mercer died,
+  And violets dusk the grass,
+By Stony Brook that ran so red of old,
+  But sings of friendship now,
+To feed the old enemy's harvest fifty-fold
+  The green earth takes the plow.
+
+Through this May night, if one great ghost should stray
+  With deep remembering eyes,
+Where that old meadow of battle smiles away
+  Its blood-stained memories,
+If Washington should walk, where friend and foe
+  Sleep and forget the past,
+Be sure his unquenched heart would leap to know
+  Their souls are linked at last.
+
+Be sure he waits, in shadowy buff and blue,
+  Where those dim lilacs wave.
+He bends his head to bless, as dreams come true,
+  The promise of that grave;
+Then, with a vaster hope than thought can scan,
+  Touching his ancient sword,
+Prays for that mightier realm of God in man:
+  "Hasten thy kingdom, Lord.
+
+"Land of our hope, land of the singing stars,
+  Type of the world to be,
+The vision of a world set free from wars
+  Takes life, takes form from thee;
+Where all the jarring nations of this earth,
+  Beneath the all-blessing sun,
+Bring the new music of mankind to birth,
+  And make the whole world one."
+
+And those old comrades rise around him there,
+  Old foemen, side by side,
+With eyes like stars upon the brave night air,
+  And young as when they died,
+To hear your bells, O beautiful Princeton towers,
+  Ring for the world's release.
+They see you piercing like gray swords through flowers,
+  And smile, from souls at peace.
+
+_Alfred Noyes_
+
+
+
+
+THE VIGIL
+
+
+England! where the sacred flame
+    Burns before the inmost shrine,
+Where the lips that love thy name
+    Consecrate their hopes and thine,
+Where the banners of thy dead
+Weave their shadows overhead,
+Watch beside thine arms to-night,
+Pray that God defend the Right.
+
+Think that when to-morrow comes
+    War shall claim command of all,
+Thou must hear the roll of drums,
+    Thou must hear the trumpet's call.
+Now, before thy silence ruth,
+Commune with the voice of truth;
+England! on thy knees to-night
+Pray that God defend the Right.
+
+Single-hearted, unafraid,
+    Hither all thy heroes came,
+On this altar's steps were laid
+    Gordon's life and Outram's fame.
+England! if thy will be yet
+By their great example set,
+Here beside thine arms to-night
+Pray that God defend the Right.
+
+So shalt thou when morning comes
+    Rise to conquer or to fall,
+Joyful hear the rolling drums,
+    Joyful tear the trumpets call,
+Then let Memory tell thy heart:
+"England! what thou wert, thou art!"
+Gird thee with thine ancient might,
+Forth! and God defend the Right!
+
+_Henry Newbolt_
+
+
+
+
+"FOR ALL WE HAVE AND ARE"
+
+
+For all we have and are,
+For all our children's fate,
+Stand up and meet the war.
+The Hun is at the gate!
+Our world has passed away
+In wantonness o'erthrown.
+There is nothing left to-day
+But steel and fire and stone.
+
+    Though all we knew depart,
+    The old commandments stand:
+    "In courage keep your heart,
+    In strength lift up your hand,"
+
+Once more we hear the word
+That sickened earth of old:
+"No law except the sword
+Unsheathed and uncontrolled,"
+Once more it knits mankind.
+Once more the nations go
+To meet and break and bind
+A crazed and driven foe.
+Comfort, content, delight--
+The ages' slow-bought gain--
+They shrivelled in a night,
+Only ourselves remain
+To face the naked days
+In silent fortitude,
+Through perils and dismays
+Renewed and re-renewed.
+
+    Though all we made depart,
+    The old commandments stand:
+    "In patience keep your heart,
+    In strength lift up your hand."
+
+No easy hopes or lies
+Shall bring us to our goal,
+But iron sacrifice
+Of body, will, and soul
+There is but one task for all--
+For each one life to give.
+Who stands if freedom fall?
+Who dies if England live?
+
+_Rudyard Kipling_
+
+
+
+
+ENGLAND TO FREE MEN
+
+
+Men of my blood, you English men!
+From misty hill and misty fen,
+From cot, and town, and plough, and moor,
+Come in--before I shut the door!
+Into my courtyard paved with stones
+That keep the names, that keep the bones,
+Of none but English men who came
+Free of their lives, to guard my fame.
+
+I am your native land who bred
+No driven heart, no driven head;
+I fly a flag in every sea
+Round the old Earth, of Liberty!
+I am the Land that boasts a crown;
+The sun comes up, the sun goes down--
+And never men may say of me,
+Mine is a breed that is not free.
+
+I have a wreath! My forehead wears
+A hundred leaves--a hundred years
+I never knew the words: "You must!"
+And shall my wreath return to dust?
+Freemen! The door is yet ajar;
+From northern star to southern star,
+O ye who count and ye who delve,
+Come in--before my clock strikes twelve!
+
+_John Galsworthy_
+
+
+
+
+_PRO PATRIA_
+
+
+England, in this great fight to which you go
+  Because, where Honour calls you, go you must,
+Be glad, whatever comes, at least to know
+      You have your quarrel just.
+
+Peace was your care; before the nations' bar
+  Her cause you pleaded and her ends you sought;
+But not for her sake, being what you are,
+      Could you be bribed and bought.
+
+Others may spurn the pledge of land to land,
+  May with the brute sword stain a gallant past;
+But by the seal to which _you_ set your hand,
+      Thank God, you still stand fast!
+
+Forth, then, to front that peril of the deep
+  With smiling lips and in your eyes the light,
+Steadfast and confident, of those who keep
+      Their storied 'scutcheon bright.
+
+And we, whose burden is to watch and wait,--
+  High-hearted ever, strong in faith and prayer,--
+We ask what offering we may consecrate,
+      What humble service share.
+
+To steel our souls against the lust of ease;
+  To bear in silence though our hearts may bleed;
+To spend ourselves, and never count the cost,
+      For others' greater need;--
+
+To go our quiet ways, subdued and sane;
+  To hush all vulgar clamour of the street;
+With level calm to face alike the strain
+      Of triumph or defeat;
+
+This be our part, for so we serve you best,
+  So best confirm their prowess and their pride,
+Your warrior sons, to whom in this high test
+      Our fortunes we confide.
+
+_Owen Seaman_
+
+_August 12, 1914_
+
+
+
+
+LINES WRITTEN IN SURREY, 1917
+
+
+A sudden swirl of song in the bright sky--
+  The little lark adoring his lord the sun;
+  Across the corn the lazy ripples run;
+Under the eaves, conferring drowsily,
+
+Doves droop or amble; the agile waterfly
+  Wrinkles the pool; and flowers, gay and dun,
+  Rose, bluebell, rhododendron, one by one,
+The buccaneering bees prove busily.
+
+Ah, who may trace this tranquil loveliness
+  In verse felicitous?--no measure tells;
+But gazing on her bosom we can guess
+  Why men strike hard for England in red hells,
+Falling on dreams, 'mid Death's extreme caress,
+  Of English daisies dancing in English dells.
+
+_George Herbert Clarke_
+
+
+
+
+FRANCE
+
+
+Because for once the sword broke in her hand,
+  The words she spoke seemed perished for a space;
+All wrong was brazen, and in every land
+  The tyrants walked abroad with naked face.
+
+The waters turned to blood, as rose the Star
+  Of evil Fate denying all release.
+The rulers smote, the feeble crying "War!"
+  The usurers robbed, the naked crying "Peace!"
+
+And her own feet were caught in nets of gold,
+  And her own soul profaned by sects that squirm,
+And little men climbed her high seats and sold
+  Her honour to the vulture and the worm.
+
+And she seemed broken and they thought her dead,
+  The Overmen, so brave against the weak.
+Has your last word of sophistry been said,
+  O cult of slaves? Then it is hers to speak.
+
+Clear the slow mists from her half-darkened eyes,
+  As slow mists parted over Valmy fell,
+As once again her hands in high surprise
+  Take hold upon the battlements of Hell.
+
+_Cecil Chesterton_
+
+
+
+
+THE NAME OF FRANCE
+
+
+Give us a name to fill the mind
+With the shining thoughts that lead mankind,
+The glory of learning, the joy of art,--
+A name that tells of a splendid part
+In the long, long toil and the strenuous fight
+Of the human race to win its way
+From the feudal darkness into the day
+Of Freedom, Brotherhood, Equal Right,--
+A name like a star, a name of light--
+        I give you _France!_
+
+Give us a name to stir the blood
+With a warmer glow and a swifter flood,--
+A name like the sound of a trumpet, clear,
+And silver-sweet, and iron-strong,
+That calls three million men to their feet,
+Ready to march, and steady to meet
+The foes who threaten that name with wrong,--
+A name that rings like a battle-song.
+        I give you _France!_
+
+Give us a name to move the heart
+With the strength that noble griefs impart,
+A name that speaks of the blood outpoured
+To save mankind from the sway of the sword,--
+A name that calls on the world to share
+In the burden of sacrificial strife
+Where the cause at stake is the world's free life
+And the rule of the people everywhere,--
+A name like a vow, a name like a prayer.
+        I give you _France!_
+
+_Henry van Dyke_
+
+
+
+
+VIVE LA FRANCE!
+
+
+Franceline rose in the dawning gray,
+And her heart would dance though she knelt to pray,
+For her man Michel had holiday,
+        Fighting for France.
+
+She offered her prayer by the cradle-side,
+And with baby palms folded in hers she cried:
+"If I have but one prayer, dear, crucified
+        Christ--save France!
+
+"But if I have two, then, by Mary's grace,
+Carry me safe to the meeting-place,
+Let me look once again on my dear love's face,
+        Save him for France!"
+
+She crooned to her boy: "Oh, how glad he'll be,
+Little three-months old, to set eyes on thee!
+For, 'Rather than gold, would I give,' wrote he,
+        'A son to France.'
+
+"Come, now, be good, little stray _sauterelle_,
+For we're going by-by to thy papa Michel,
+But I'll not say where for fear thou wilt tell,
+        Little pigeon of France!
+
+"Six days' leave and a year between!
+But what would you have? In six days clean,
+Heaven was made," said Franceline,
+        "Heaven and France."
+
+She came to the town of the nameless name,
+To the marching troops in the street she came,
+And she held high her boy like a taper flame
+            Burning for France.
+
+Fresh from the trenches and gray with grime,
+Silent they march like a pantomime;
+"But what need of music? My heart beats time--
+            _Vive la France!_"
+
+His regiment comes. Oh, then where is he?
+"There is dust in my eyes, for I cannot see,--
+Is that my Michel to the right of thee,
+            Soldier of France?"
+
+Then out of the ranks a comrade fell,--
+"Yesterday--'t was a splinter of shell--
+And he whispered thy name, did thy poor Michel,
+            Dying for France."
+
+The tread of the troops on the pavement throbbed
+Like a woman's heart of its last joy robbed,
+As she lifted her boy to the flag, and sobbed:
+            "_Vive la France!_"
+
+_Charlotte Holmes Crawford_
+
+
+
+
+THE SOUL OF JEANNE D'ARC
+
+
+_She came not into the Presence as a martyred saint might come,
+Crowned, white-robed and adoring, with very reverence dumb,--_
+
+_She stood as a straight young soldier, confident, gallant, strong,
+Who asks a boon of his captain in the sudden hush of the drum._
+
+She said: "Now have I stayed too long in this my place of bliss,
+With these glad dead that, comforted, forget what sorrow is
+Upon that world whose stony stairs they climbed to come to this.
+
+"But lo, a cry hath torn the peace wherein so long I stayed,
+Like a trumpet's call at Heaven's wall from a herald unafraid,--
+A million voices in one cry, '_Where is the Maid, the Maid?_'
+
+"I had forgot from too much joy that olden task of mine,
+But I have heard a certain word shatter the chant divine,
+Have watched a banner glow and grow before mine eyes for sign.
+
+"I would return to that my land flung in the teeth of war,
+I would cast down my robe and crown that pleasure me no more,
+And don the armor that I knew, the valiant sword I bore.
+
+"And angels militant shall fling the gates of Heaven wide,
+And souls new-dead whose lives were shed like leaves on war's red tide
+Shall cross their swords above our heads and cheer us as we ride,
+
+"For with me goes that soldier saint, Saint Michael of the sword,
+And I shall ride on his right side, a page beside his lord,
+And men shall follow like swift blades to reap a sure reward.
+
+"Grant that I answer this my call, yea, though the end may be
+The naked shame, the biting flame, the last, long agony;
+I would go singing down that road where fagots wait for me.
+
+"Mine be the fire about my feet, the smoke above my head;
+So might I glow, a torch to show the path my heroes tread;
+_My Captain! Oh, my Captain, let me go back!_" she said.
+
+_Theodosia Garrison_
+
+
+
+
+O GLORIOUS FRANCE
+
+
+You have become a forge of snow-white fire,
+A crucible of molten steel, O France!
+Your sons are stars who cluster to a dawn
+And fade in light for you, O glorious France!
+They pass through meteor changes with a song
+Which to all islands and all continents
+Says life is neither comfort, wealth, nor fame,
+Nor quiet hearthstones, friendship, wife nor child,
+Nor love, nor youth's delight, nor manhood's power,
+Nor many days spent in a chosen work,
+Nor honored merit, nor the patterned theme
+Of daily labor, nor the crowns nor wreaths
+Of seventy years.
+
+                  These are not all of life,
+O France, whose sons amid the rolling thunder
+Of cannon stand in trenches where the dead
+Clog the ensanguined ice. But life to these
+Prophetic and enraptured souls is vision,
+And the keen ecstasy of fated strife,
+And divination of the loss as gain,
+And reading mysteries with brightened eyes
+In fiery shock and dazzling pain before
+The orient splendour of the face of Death,
+As a great light beside a shadowy sea;
+And in a high will's strenuous exercise,
+Where the warmed spirit finds its fullest strength
+And is no more afraid, and in the stroke
+Of azure lightning when the hidden essence
+And shifting meaning of man's spiritual worth
+And mystical significance in time
+Are instantly distilled to one clear drop
+Which mirrors earth and heaven.
+
+                   This is life
+Flaming to heaven in a minute's span
+When the breath of battle blows the smouldering spark.
+And across these seas
+We who cry Peace and treasure life and cling
+To cities, happiness, or daily toil
+For daily bread, or trail the long routine
+Of seventy years, taste not the terrible wine
+Whereof you drink, who drain and toss the cup
+Empty and ringing by the finished feast;
+Or have it shaken from your hand by sight
+Of God against the olive woods.
+
+As Joan of Arc amid the apple trees
+With sacred joy first heard the voices, then
+Obeying plunged at Orleans in a field
+Of spears and lived her dream and died in fire,
+Thou, France, hast heard the voices and hast lived
+The dream and known the meaning of the dream,
+And read its riddle: how the soul of man
+May to one greatest purpose make itself
+A lens of clearness, how it loves the cup
+Of deepest truth, and how its bitterest gall
+Turns sweet to soul's surrender.
+
+                    And you say:
+Take days for repetition, stretch your hands
+For mocked renewal of familiar things:
+The beaten path, the chair beside the window,
+The crowded street, the task, the accustomed sleep,
+And waking to the task, or many springs
+Of lifted cloud, blue water, flowering fields--
+The prison-house grows close no less, the feast
+A place of memory sick for senses dulled
+Down to the dusty end where pitiful Time
+Grown weary cries Enough!
+
+_Edgar Lee Masters_
+
+
+
+
+TO FRANCE
+
+
+Those who have stood for thy cause when the dark was around thee,
+Those who have pierced through the shadows and shining have found thee,
+Those who have held to their faith in thy courage and power,
+Thy spirit, thy honor, thy strength for a terrible hour,
+Now can rejoice that they see thee in light and in glory,
+Facing whatever may come as an end to the story
+In calm undespairing, with steady eyes fixed on the morrow--
+The morn that is pregnant with blood and with death and with sorrow.
+And whether the victory crowns thee, O France the eternal,
+Or whether the smoke and the dusk of a nightfall infernal
+Gather about thee, and us, and the foe; and all treasures
+Run with the flooding of war into bottomless measures--
+Fall what befalls: in this hour all those who are near thee
+And all who have loved thee, they rise and salute and revere thee!
+
+_Herbert Jones_
+
+
+
+
+PLACE DE LA CONCORDE
+
+AUGUST 14, 1914
+
+
+[Since the bombardment of Strasburg, August 14, 1870, her statue in
+Paris, representing Alsace, has been draped in mourning by the French
+people.]
+
+Near where the royal victims fell
+In days gone by, caught in the swell
+Of a ruthless tide
+Of human passion, deep and wide:
+There where we two
+A Nation's later sorrow knew--
+To-day, O friend! I stood
+Amid a self-ruled multitude
+That by nor sound nor word
+Betrayed how mightily its heart was stirred,
+
+A memory Time never could efface--
+A memory of Grief--
+Like a great Silence brooded o'er the place;
+And men breathed hard, as seeking for relief
+From an emotion strong
+That would not cry, though held in check too long.
+
+One felt that joy drew near--
+A joy intense that seemed itself to fear--
+Brightening in eyes that had been dull,
+As all with feeling gazed
+Upon the Strasburg figure, raised
+Above us--mourning, beautiful!
+
+Then one stood at the statue's base, and spoke--
+Men needed not to ask what word;
+Each in his breast the message heard,
+Writ for him by Despair,
+That evermore in moving phrase
+Breathes from the Invalides and Père Lachaise--
+Vainly it seemed, alas!
+But now, France looking on the image there,
+Hope gave her back the lost Alsace.
+
+A deeper hush fell on the crowd:
+A sound--the lightest--seemed too loud
+(Would, friend, you had been there!)
+As to that form the speaker rose,
+Took from her, fold on fold,
+The mournful crape, gray-worn and old,
+Her, proudly, to disclose,
+And with the touch of tender care
+That fond emotion speaks,
+'Mid tears that none could quite command,
+Placed the Tricolor in her hand,
+And kissed her on both cheeks!
+
+_Florence Earle Coates_
+
+
+
+
+TO FRANCE
+
+
+What is the gift we have given thee, Sister?
+  What is the trust we have laid in thy hand?
+Hearts of our bravest, our best, and our dearest,
+  Blood of our blood we have sown in thy land.
+
+What for all time will the harvest be, Sister?
+  What will spring up from the seed that is sown?
+Freedom and peace and goodwill among Nations,
+  Love that will bind us with love all our own.
+
+Bright is the path, that is opening before us,
+  Upward and onward it mounts through the night;
+Sword shall not sever the bonds that unite us
+  Leading the world to the fullness of light.
+
+Sorrow hath made thee more beautiful, Sister,
+  Nobler and purer than ever before;
+We who are chastened by sorrow and anguish
+  Hail thee as sister and queen evermore.
+
+_Frederick George Scott_
+
+
+
+
+_QUI VIVE?_
+
+
+_Qui vive?_ Who passes by up there?
+Who moves--what stirs in the startled air?
+What whispers, thrills, exults up there?
+_Qui vive?_
+        "The Flags of France."
+
+What wind on a windless night is this,
+That breathes as light as a lover's kiss,
+That blows through the night with bugle notes,
+That streams like a pennant from a lance,
+That rustles, that floats?
+        "The Flags of France."
+
+What richly moves, what lightly stirs,
+Like a noble lady in a dance,
+When all men's eyes are in love with hers
+And needs must follow?
+        "The Flags of France."
+
+What calls to the heart--and the heart has heard,
+Speaks, and the soul has obeyed the word,
+Summons, and all the years advance,
+And the world goes forward with France--with France?
+Who called?
+        "The Flags of France."
+
+What flies--a glory, through the night,
+While the legions stream--a line of light,
+And men fall to the left and fall to the right,
+But _they_ fall not?
+        "The Flags of France."
+
+_Qui vive?_ Who comes? What approaches there?
+What soundless tumult, what breath in the air
+Takes the breath in the throat, the blood from the heart?
+In a flame of dark, to the unheard beat
+Of an unseen drum and fleshless feet,
+Without glint of barrel or bayonets' glance,
+They approach--they come. _Who_ comes? (Hush! Hark!)
+_"Qui vive?"_
+        "The Flags of France."
+
+Uncover the head and kneel--kneel down,
+A monarch passes, without a crown,
+Let the proud tears fall but the heart beat high:
+The Greatest of All is passing by,
+On its endless march in the endless Plan:
+"_Qui vive?_"
+        "The Spirit of Man."
+
+"O Spirit of Man, pass on! Advance!"
+And they who lead, who hold the van?
+Kneel down!
+        The Flags of France.
+
+_Grace Ellery Channing_
+
+_Paris, 1917_
+
+
+
+
+TO THE BELGIANS
+
+
+O Race that Caesar knew,
+That won stern Roman praise,
+What land not envies you
+The laurel of these days?
+
+You built your cities rich
+Around each towered hall,--
+Without, the statued niche,
+Within, the pictured wall.
+
+Your ship-thronged wharves; your marts
+With gorgeous Venice vied.
+Peace and her famous arts
+Were yours: though tide on tide
+
+Of Europe's battle scourged
+Black field and reddened soil,
+From blood and smoke emerged
+Peace and her fruitful toil.
+
+Yet when the challenge rang,
+"The War-Lord comes; give room!"
+Fearless to arms you sprang
+Against the odds of doom.
+
+Like your own Damien
+Who sought that leper's isle
+To die a simple man
+For men with tranquil smile,
+
+So strong in faith you dared
+Defy the giant, scorn
+Ignobly to be spared,
+Though trampled, spoiled, and torn,
+
+And in your faith arose
+And smote, and smote again,
+Till those astonished foes
+Reeled from their mounds of slain,
+
+The faith that the free soul,
+Untaught by force to quail,
+Through fire and dirge and dole
+Prevails and shall prevail.
+
+Still for your frontier stands
+The host that knew no dread,
+Your little, stubborn land's
+Nameless, immortal dead.
+
+_Laurence Binyon_
+
+
+
+
+BELGIUM
+
+
+_La Belgique ne regrette rien_
+
+Not with her ruined silver spires,
+Not with her cities shamed and rent,
+Perish the imperishable fires
+That shape the homestead from the tent.
+
+Wherever men are staunch and free,
+There shall she keep her fearless state,
+And homeless, to great nations be
+The home of all that makes them great.
+
+_Edith Wharton_
+
+
+
+
+TO BELGIUM
+
+
+Champion of human honour, let us lave
+  Your feet and bind your wounds on bended knee.
+  Though coward hands have nailed you to the tree
+And shed your innocent blood and dug your grave,
+Rejoice and live! Your oriflamme shall wave--
+  While man has power to perish and be free--
+  A golden flame of holiest Liberty,
+Proud as the dawn and as the sunset brave.
+
+Belgium, where dwelleth reverence for right
+  Enthroned above all ideals; where your fate
+And your supernal patience and your might
+  Most sacred grow in human estimate,
+You shine a star above this stormy night
+  Little no more, but infinitely great.
+
+_Eden Phillpotts_
+
+
+
+
+TO BELGIUM IN EXILE
+
+
+[Lines dedicated to one of her priests, by whose words they were
+prompted.]
+
+Land of the desolate, Mother of tears,
+  Weeping your beauty marred and torn,
+Your children tossed upon the spears,
+  Your altars rent, your hearths forlorn,
+Where Spring has no renewing spell,
+And Love no language save a long Farewell!
+
+Ah, precious tears, and each a pearl,
+  Whose price--for so in God we trust
+Who saw them fall in that blind swirl
+  Of ravening flame and reeking dust--
+The spoiler with his life shall pay,
+When Justice at the last demands her Day.
+
+O tried and proved, whose record stands
+  Lettered in blood too deep to fade,
+Take courage! Never in our hands
+  Shall the avenging sword be stayed
+Till you are healed of all your pain,
+And come with Honour to your own again.
+
+_Owen Seaman_
+
+_May 19, 1915_
+
+
+
+
+THE WIFE OF FLANDERS
+
+
+Low and brown barns, thatched and repatched and tattered,
+  Where I had seven sons until to-day,
+A little hill of hay your spur has scattered....
+  This is not Paris. You have lost the way.
+
+You, staring at your sword to find it brittle,
+  Surprised at the surprise that was your plan,
+Who, shaking and breaking barriers not a little,
+  Find never more the death-door of Sedan--
+
+Must I for more than carnage call you claimant,
+  Paying you a penny for each son you slay?
+Man, the whole globe in gold were no repayment
+  For what _you_ have lost. And how shall I repay?
+
+What is the price of that red spark that caught me
+  From a kind farm that never had a name?
+What is the price of that dead man they brought me?
+  For other dead men do not look the same.
+
+How should I pay for one poor graven steeple
+  Whereon you shattered what you shall not know?
+How should I pay you, miserable people?
+  How should I pay you everything you owe?
+
+Unhappy, can I give you back your honour?
+  Though I forgave, would any man forget?
+While all the great green land has trampled on her
+  The treason and terror of the night we met.
+
+Not any more in vengeance or in pardon
+  An old wife bargains for a bean that's hers.
+You have no word to break: no heart to harden.
+  Ride on and prosper. You have lost your spurs.
+
+_Gilbert Keith Chesterton_
+
+
+
+
+RUSSIA--AMERICA
+
+
+A wind in the world! The dark departs;
+The chains now rust that crushed men's flesh and bones,
+Feet tread no more the mildewed prison stones,
+And slavery is lifted from your hearts.
+
+A wind in the world! O Company
+Of darkened Russia, watching long in vain,
+Now shall you see the cloud of Russia's pain
+Go shrinking out across a summer sky.
+
+A wind in the world! Our God shall be
+In all the future left, no kingly doll
+Decked out with dreadful sceptre, steel, and stole,
+But walk the earth--a man, in Charity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A wind in the world! And doubts are blown
+To dust along, and the old stars come forth--
+Stars of a creed to Pilgrim Fathers worth
+A field of broken spears and flowers strown.
+
+A wind in the world! Now truancy
+From the true self is ended; to her part
+Steadfast again she moves, and from her heart
+A great America cries: Death to Tyranny!
+
+A wind in the world! And we have come
+Together, sea by sea; in all the lands
+Vision doth move at last, and Freedom stands
+With brightened wings, and smiles and beckons home!
+
+_John Galsworthy_
+
+
+
+
+TO RUSSIA NEW AND FREE
+
+
+  Land of the Martyrs--of the martyred dead
+    And martyred living--now of noble fame!
+  Long wert thou saddest of the nations, wed
+    To Sorrow as the fire to the flame,
+Not yet relentless History had writ of Teuton shame.
+
+  Thou knewest all the gloom of hope deferred.
+    'Twixt God and Russia wrong had built such bar
+  Each by the other could no more be heard.
+    Seen through the cloud, the child's familiar star,
+That once made Heaven near, had made it seem more far.
+
+  Land of the Breaking Dawn! No more look back
+    To that long night that nevermore can be:
+  The sunless dungeon and the exile's track.
+    To the world's dreams of terror let it flee.
+To gentle April cruel March is now antiquity.
+
+  Yet--of the Past one sacred relic save:
+    That boundary-post 'twixt Russia and Despair,--
+  Set where the dead might look upon his grave,--
+    Kissed by him with his last-breathed Russian air.
+Keep it to witness to the world what heroes still may dare.
+
+  Land of New Hope, no more the minor key,
+    No more the songs of exile long and lone;
+  Thy tears henceforth be tears of memory.
+    Sing, with the joy the joyless would have known
+Who for this visioned happiness so gladly gave their own.
+
+  Land of the warm heart and the friendly hand,
+    Strike the free chord; no more the muted strings!
+  Forever let the equal record stand--
+    A thousand winters for this Spring of Springs,
+That to a warring world, through thee, millennial longing brings.
+
+  On thy white tablets, cleansed of royal stain,
+    What message to the future mayst thou write!--
+  The People's Law, the bulwark of their reign,
+    And vigilant Liberty, of ancient might,
+And Brotherhood, that can alone lead to the loftiest height.
+
+  Take, then, our hearts' rejoicing overflow,
+    Thou new-born daughter of Democracy,
+  Whose coming sets the expectant earth aglow.
+    Soon the glad skies thy proud new flag shall see,
+And hear thy chanted hymns of hope for Russia new and free.
+
+_Robert Underwood Johnson_
+
+_April, 1917_
+
+
+
+
+ITALY IN ARMS
+
+
+Of all my dreams by night and day,
+    One dream will evermore return,
+The dream of Italy in May;
+    The sky a brimming azure urn
+    Where lights of amber brood and burn;
+The doves about San Marco's square,
+    The swimming Campanile tower,
+    The giants, hammering out the hour,
+        The palaces, the bright lagoons,
+The gondolas gliding here and there
+        Upon the tide that sways and swoons.
+
+The domes of San Antonio,
+    Where Padua 'mid her mulberry-trees
+Reclines; Adige's crescent flow
+    Beneath Verona's balconies;
+    Rich Florence of the Medicis;
+Sienna's starlike streets that climb
+    From hill to hill; Assisi well
+    Remembering the holy spell
+        Of rapt St. Francis; with her crown
+Of battlements, embossed by time,
+        Stern old Perugia looking down.
+
+Then, mother of great empires, Rome,
+    City of the majestic past,
+That o'er far leagues of alien foam
+    The shadows of her eagles cast,
+    Imperious still; impending, vast,
+
+The Colosseum's curving line;
+    Pillar and arch and colonnade;
+    St. Peter's consecrated shade,
+        And Hadrian's tomb where Tiber strays;
+The ruins on the Palatine
+        With all their memories of dead days.
+
+And Naples, with her sapphire arc
+    Of bay, her perfect sweep of shore;
+Above her, like a demon stark,
+    The dark fire-mountain evermore
+    Looming portentous, as of yore;
+Fair Capri with her cliffs and caves;
+    Salerno drowsing 'mid her vines
+    And olives, and the shattered shrines
+        Of Paestum where the gray ghosts tread,
+And where the wilding rose still waves
+        As when by Greek girls garlanded.
+
+But hark! What sound the ear dismays,
+    Mine Italy, mine Italy?
+Thou that wert wrapt in peace, the haze
+    Of loveliness spread over thee!
+    Yet since the grapple needs must be,
+I who have wandered in the night
+    With Dante, Petrarch's Laura known,
+    Seen Vallombrosa's groves breeze-blown,
+        Met Angelo and Raffael,
+Against iconoclastic might
+        In this grim hour must wish thee well!
+
+_Clinton Scollard_
+
+
+
+
+ON THE ITALIAN FRONT, MCMXVI
+
+
+"I will die cheering, if I needs must die;
+  So shall my last breath write upon my lips
+  _Viva Italia!_ when my spirit slips
+Down the great darkness from the mountain sky;
+And those who shall behold me where I lie
+  Shall murmur: 'Look, you! how his spirit dips
+  From glory into glory! the eclipse
+Of death is vanquished! Lo, his victor-cry!'
+
+"Live, thou, upon my lips, Italia mine,
+  The sacred death-cry of my frozen clay!
+Let thy dear light from my dead body shine
+  And to the passer-by thy message say:
+'_Ecco!_ though heaven has made my skies divine,
+My sons' love sanctifies my soil for aye!'"
+
+_George Edward Woodberry_
+
+
+
+
+AUSTRALIA TO ENGLAND
+
+
+By all the deeds to Thy dear glory done,
+  By all the life blood, spilt to serve Thy need,
+  By all the fettered lives Thy touch hath freed,
+By all Thy dream in us anew begun;
+By all the guerdon English sire to son
+  Hath given of highest vision, kingliest deed,
+  By all Thine agony, of God decreed
+For trial and strength, our fate with Thine is one.
+
+Still dwells Thy spirit in our hearts and lips,
+  Honour and life we hold from none but Thee,
+    And if we live Thy pensioners no more
+But seek a nation's might of men and ships,
+    'T is but that when the world is black with war
+  Thy sons may stand beside Thee strong and free.
+
+_Archibald T. Strong_
+
+_August, 1914_
+
+
+
+
+CANADA TO ENGLAND
+
+
+Great names of thy great captains gone before
+  Beat with our blood, who have that blood of thee:
+  Raleigh and Grenville, Wolfe, and all the free
+Fine souls who dared to front a world in war.
+Such only may outreach the envious years
+  Where feebler crowns and fainter stars remove,
+  Nurtured in one remembrance and one love
+Too high for passion and too stern for tears.
+
+O little isle our fathers held for home,
+  Not, not alone thy standards and thy hosts
+    Lead where thy sons shall follow, Mother Land:
+Quick as the north wind, ardent as the foam,
+  Behold, behold the invulnerable ghosts
+    Of all past greatnesses about thee stand.
+
+_Marjorie L.C. Pickthall_
+
+
+
+
+LANGEMARCK AT YPRES
+
+
+This is the ballad of Langemarck,
+  A story of glory and might;
+Of the vast Hun horde, and Canada's part
+  In the great grim fight.
+
+It was April fair on the Flanders Fields,
+  But the dreadest April then
+That ever the years, in their fateful flight,
+  Had brought to this world of men.
+
+North and east, a monster wall,
+  The mighty Hun ranks lay,
+With fort on fort, and iron-ringed trench,
+  Menacing, grim and gray.
+
+And south and west, like a serpent of fire,
+  Serried the British lines,
+And in between, the dying and dead,
+And the stench of blood, and the trampled mud,
+  On the fair, sweet Belgian vines.
+
+And far to the eastward, harnessed and taut,
+  Like a scimitar, shining and keen,
+Gleaming out of that ominous gloom,
+  Old France's hosts were seen.
+
+When out of the grim Hun lines one night,
+  There rolled a sinister smoke;--
+A strange, weird cloud, like a pale, green shroud,
+  And death lurked in its cloak.
+
+On a fiend-like wind it curled along
+  Over the brave French ranks,
+Like a monster tree its vapours spread,
+  In hideous, burning banks
+Of poisonous fumes that scorched the night
+  With their sulphurous demon danks.
+
+And men went mad with horror, and fled
+  From that terrible, strangling death,
+That seemed to sear both body and soul
+  With its baleful, flaming breath.
+
+Till even the little dark men of the south,
+  Who feared neither God nor man,
+Those fierce, wild fighters of Afric's steppes,
+  Broke their battalions and ran:--
+
+Ran as they never had run before,
+  Gasping, and fainting for breath;
+For they knew 't was no human foe that slew;
+  And that hideous smoke meant death.
+
+Then red in the reek of that evil cloud,
+  The Hun swept over the plain;
+And the murderer's dirk did its monster work,
+  'Mid the scythe-like shrapnel rain;
+
+Till it seemed that at last the brute Hun hordes
+  Had broken that wall of steel;
+And that soon, through this breach in the freeman's dyke,
+  His trampling hosts would wheel;--
+
+And sweep to the south in ravaging might,
+  And Europe's peoples again
+Be trodden under the tyrant's heel,
+  Like herds, in the Prussian pen.
+
+But in that line on the British right,
+  There massed a corps amain,
+Of men who hailed from a far west land
+  Of mountain and forest and plain;
+
+Men new to war and its dreadest deeds,
+  But noble and staunch and true;
+Men of the open, East and West,
+  Brew of old Britain's brew.
+
+These were the men out there that night,
+  When Hell loomed close ahead;
+Who saw that pitiful, hideous rout,
+  And breathed those gases dread;
+While some went under and some went mad;
+  But never a man there fled.
+
+For the word was "Canada," theirs to fight,
+  And keep on fighting still;--
+Britain said, fight, and fight they would,
+Though the Devil himself in sulphurous mood
+  Came over that hideous hill.
+
+Yea, stubborn, they stood, that hero band,
+  Where no soul hoped to live;
+For five, 'gainst eighty thousand men,
+  Were hopeless odds to give.
+
+Yea, fought they on! 'T was Friday eve,
+  When that demon gas drove down;
+'T was Saturday eve that saw them still
+  Grimly holding their own;
+
+Sunday, Monday, saw them yet,
+  A steadily lessening band,
+With "no surrender" in their hearts,
+  But the dream of a far-off land,
+
+Where mother and sister and love would weep
+  For the hushed heart lying still;--
+But never a thought but to do their part,
+  And work the Empire's will.
+
+Ringed round, hemmed in, and back to back,
+  They fought there under the dark,
+And won for Empire, God and Right,
+  At grim, red Langemarck.
+
+Wonderful battles have shaken this world,
+  Since the Dawn-God overthrew Dis;
+Wonderful struggles of right against wrong,
+Sung in the rhymes of the world's great song,
+  But never a greater than this.
+
+Bannockburn, Inkerman, Balaclava,
+  Marathon's godlike stand;
+But never a more heroic deed,
+And never a greater warrior breed,
+  In any war-man's land.
+
+This is the ballad of Langemarck,
+  A story of glory and might;
+Of the vast Hun horde, and Canada's part
+  In the great, grim fight.
+
+_Wilfred Campbell_
+
+
+
+
+CANADIANS
+
+
+With arrows on their quarters and with numbers on their hoofs,
+With the trampling sound of twenty that re-echoes in the roofs,
+Low of crest and dull of coat, wan and wild of eye,
+Through our English village the Canadians go by.
+
+Shying at a passing cart, swerving from a car,
+Tossing up an anxious head to flaunt a snowy star,
+Racking at a Yankee gait, reaching at the rein,
+Twenty raw Canadians are tasting life again!
+
+Hollow-necked and hollow-flanked, lean of rib and hip,
+Strained and sick and weary with the wallow of the ship,
+Glad to smell the turf again, hear the robin's call,
+Tread again the country road they lost at Montreal!
+
+Fate may bring them dule and woe; better steeds than they
+Sleep beside the English guns a hundred leagues away;
+But till war hath need of them, lightly lie their reins,
+Softly fall the feet of them along the English lanes.
+
+_Will H. Ogilvie_
+
+
+
+
+THE KAISER AND BELGIUM
+
+
+He said: "Thou petty people, let me pass.
+  What canst thou do but bow to me and kneel?"
+But sudden a dry land caught fire like grass,
+  And answer hurtled but from shell and steel.
+
+He looked for silence, but a thunder came
+  Upon him, from Liège a leaden hail.
+All Belgium flew up at his throat in flame
+  Till at her gates amazed his legions quail.
+
+Take heed, for now on haunted ground they tread;
+  There bowed a mightier war lord to his fall:
+Fear! lest that very green grass again grow red
+  With blood of German now as then with Gaul.
+
+If him whom God destroys He maddens first,
+Then thy destruction slake thy madman's thirst.
+
+_Stephen Phillips_
+
+
+
+
+THE BATTLE OF LIÈGE
+
+
+Now spake the Emperor to all his shining battle forces,
+To the Lancers, and the Rifles, to the Gunners and the Horses;--
+And his pride surged up within him as he saw their banners stream!--
+"'T is a twelve-day march to Paris, by the road our fathers travelled,
+And the prize is half an empire when the scarlet road's unravelled--
+Go you now across the border,
+God's decree and William's order--
+Climb the frowning Belgian ridges
+With your naked swords agleam!
+Seize the City of the Bridges--
+Then get on, get on to Paris--
+To the jewelled streets of Paris--
+To the lovely woman, Paris, that has driven me to dream!"
+
+A hundred thousand fighting men
+They climbed the frowning ridges,
+With their flaming swords drawn free
+And their pennants at their knee.
+They went up to their desire,
+To the City of the Bridges,
+With their naked brands outdrawn
+Like the lances of the dawn!
+In a swelling surf of fire,
+Crawling higher--higher--higher--
+Till they crumpled up and died
+Like a sudden wasted tide,
+And the thunder in their faces beat them down and flung them wide!
+
+They had paid a thousand men,
+Yet they formed and came again,
+For they heard the silver bugles sounding challenge to their pride,
+And they rode with swords agleam
+For the glory of a dream,
+And they stormed up to the cannon's mouth and withered there, and
+  died....
+The daylight lay in ashes
+On the blackened western hill,
+And the dead were calm and still;
+But the Night was torn with gashes--
+Sudden ragged crimson gashes--
+And the siege-guns snarled and roared,
+With their flames thrust like a sword,
+And the tranquil moon came riding on the heaven's silver ford.
+
+What a fearful world was there,
+Tangled in the cold moon's hair!
+Man and beast lay hurt and screaming,
+(Men must die when Kings are dreaming!)--
+While within the harried town
+Mothers dragged their children down
+As the awful rain came screaming,
+For the glory of a Crown!
+
+So the Morning flung her cloak
+Through the hanging pall of smoke--
+Trimmed with red, it was, and dripping with a deep and angry stain!
+And the Day came walking then
+Through a lane of murdered men,
+And her light fell down before her like a Cross upon the plain!
+But the forts still crowned the height
+With a bitter iron crown!
+They had lived to flame and fight,
+They had lived to keep the Town!
+And they poured their havoc down
+All that day ... and all that night....
+While four times their number came,
+Pawns that played a bloody game!--
+With a silver trumpeting,
+For the glory of the King,
+To the barriers of the thunder and the fury of the flame!
+
+So they stormed the iron Hill,
+O'er the sleepers lying still,
+And their trumpets sang them forward through the dull succeeding dawns,
+But the thunder flung them wide,
+And they crumpled up and died,--
+They had waged the war of monarchs--and they died the death of pawns.
+
+But the forts still stood.... Their breath
+Swept the foeman like a blade,
+Though ten thousand men were paid
+To the hungry purse of Death,
+Though the field was wet with blood,
+Still the bold defences stood,
+Stood!
+
+And the King came out with his bodyguard at the day's departing gleam--
+And the moon rode up behind the smoke and showed the King his dream.
+
+_Dana Burnet_
+
+
+
+
+MEN OF VERDUN
+
+
+There are five men in the moonlight
+  That by their shadows stand;
+Three hobble humped on crutches,
+  And two lack each a hand.
+
+Frogs somewhere near the roadside
+  Chorus their chant absorbed:
+But a hush breathes out of the dream-light
+  That far in heaven is orbed.
+
+It is gentle as sleep falling
+  And wide as thought can span,
+The ancient peace and wonder
+  That brims the heart of man.
+
+Beyond the hills it shines now
+  On no peace but the dead,
+On reek of trenches thunder-shocked,
+Tense fury of wills in wrestle locked,
+  A chaos crumbled red!
+
+The five men in the moonlight
+  Chat, joke, or gaze apart.
+They talk of days and comrades,
+  But each one hides his heart.
+
+They wear clean cap and tunic,
+  As when they went to war;
+A gleam comes where the medal's pinned:
+  But they will fight no more.
+
+The shadows, maimed and antic,
+  Gesture and shape distort,
+Like mockery of a demon dumb
+Out of the hell-din whence they come
+  That dogs them for his sport:
+
+But as if dead men were risen
+  And stood before me there
+With a terrible fame about them blown
+  In beams of spectral air,
+
+I see them, men transfigured
+  As in a dream, dilate
+Fabulous with the Titan-throb
+  Of battling Europe's fate;
+
+For history's hushed before them,
+  And legend flames afresh,--
+Verdun, the name of thunder,
+  Is written on their flesh.
+
+_Laurence Binyon_
+
+
+
+
+VERDUN
+
+
+Three hundred thousand men, but not enough
+To break this township on a winding stream;
+More yet must fall, and more, ere the red stuff
+That built a nation's manhood may redeem
+The Master's hopes and realize his dream.
+
+They pave the way to Verdun; on their dust
+The Hohenzollerns mount and, hand in hand,
+Gaze haggard south; for yet another thrust
+And higher hills must heap, ere they may stand
+To feed their eyes upon the promised land.
+
+One barrow, borne of women, lifts them high,
+Built up of many a thousand human dead.
+Nursed on their mothers' bosoms, now they lie--
+A Golgotha, all shattered, torn and sped,
+A mountain for these royal feet to tread.
+
+A Golgotha, upon whose carrion clay
+Justice of myriad men still in the womb
+Shall heave two crosses; crucify and flay
+Two memories accurs'd; then in the tomb
+Of world-wide execration give them room.
+
+Verdun! A clarion thy name shall ring
+Adown the ages and the Nations see
+Thy monuments of glory. Now we bring
+Thank-offering and bend the reverent knee,
+Thou star upon the crown of Liberty!
+
+_Eden Phillpotts_
+
+
+
+
+GUNS OF VERDUN
+
+
+Guns of Verdun point to Metz
+From the plated parapets;
+Guns of Metz grin back again
+O'er the fields of fair Lorraine.
+
+Guns of Metz are long and grey,
+Growling through a summer day;
+Guns of Verdun, grey and long,
+Boom an echo of their song.
+
+Guns of Metz to Verdun roar,
+"Sisters, you shall foot the score;"
+Guns of Verdun say to Metz,
+"Fear not, for we pay our debts."
+
+Guns of Metz they grumble, "When?"
+Guns of Verdun answer then,
+"Sisters, when to guard Lorraine
+Gunners lay you East again!"
+
+_Patrick R. Chalmers_
+
+
+
+
+THE SPIRES OF OXFORD
+
+
+I saw the spires of Oxford
+  As I was passing by,
+The gray spires of Oxford
+  Against the pearl-gray sky.
+My heart was with the Oxford men
+  Who went abroad to die.
+
+The years go fast in Oxford,
+  The golden years and gay,
+The hoary Colleges look down
+  On careless boys at play.
+But when the bugles sounded war
+  They put their games away.
+
+They left the peaceful river,
+  The cricket-field, the quad,
+The shaven lawns of Oxford,
+  To seek a bloody sod--
+They gave their merry youth away
+  For country and for God.
+
+God rest you, happy gentlemen,
+  Who laid your good lives down,
+Who took the khaki and the gun
+  Instead of cap and gown.
+God bring you to a fairer place
+  Than even Oxford town.
+
+_Winifred M. Letts_
+
+
+
+
+OXFORD IN WAR-TIME
+
+
+[The Boat Race will not be held this year (1915). The whole of last
+year's Oxford Eight and the great majority of the cricket and football
+teams are serving the King.]
+
+Under the tow-path past the barges
+  Never an eight goes flashing by;
+Never a blatant coach on the marge is
+  Urging his crew to do or die;
+Never the critic we knew enlarges,
+  Fluent, on How and Why!
+
+Once by the Iffley Road November
+  Welcomed the Football men aglow,
+Covered with mud, as you'll remember,
+  Eager to vanquish Oxford's foe.
+Where are the teams of last December?
+  Gone--where they had to go!
+
+Where are her sons who waged at cricket
+  Warfare against the foeman-friend?
+Far from the Parks, on a harder wicket,
+  Still they attack and still defend;
+Playing a greater game, they'll stick it,
+  Fearless until the end!
+
+Oxford's goodliest children leave her,
+  Hastily thrusting books aside;
+Still the hurrying weeks bereave her,
+  Filling her heart with joy and pride;
+Only the thought of you can grieve her,
+  You who have fought and died.
+
+_W. Snow_
+
+
+
+
+OXFORD REVISITED IN WAR-TIME
+
+
+Beneath fair Magdalen's storied towers
+I wander in a dream,
+And hear the mellow chimes float out
+O'er Cherwell's ice-bound stream.
+
+Throstle and blackbird stiff with cold
+Hop on the frozen grass;
+Among the aged, upright oaks
+The dun deer slowly pass.
+
+The chapel organ rolls and swells,
+And voices still praise God;
+But ah! the thought of youthful friends
+Who lie beneath the sod.
+
+Now wounded men with gallant eyes
+Go hobbling down the street,
+And nurses from the hospitals
+Speed by with tireless feet.
+
+The town is full of uniforms,
+And through the stormy sky,
+Frightening the rooks from the tallest trees,
+The aeroplanes roar by.
+
+The older faces still are here,
+More grave and true and kind,
+Ennobled by the steadfast toil
+Of patient heart and mind.
+
+And old-time friends are dearer grown
+To fill a double place:
+Unshaken faith makes glorious
+Each forward-looking face.
+
+Old Oxford walls are grey and worn:
+She knows the truth of tears,
+But to-day she stands in her ancient pride
+Crowned with eternal years.
+
+Gone are her sons: yet her heart is glad
+In the glory of their youth,
+For she brought them forth to live or die
+By freedom, justice, truth.
+
+Cold moonlight falls on silent towers;
+The young ghosts walk with the old;
+But Oxford dreams of the dawn of May
+And her heart is free and bold.
+
+_Tertius van Dyke_
+
+_Magdalen College_,
+
+_January, 1917_
+
+
+
+
+SONNETS WRITTEN IN THE FALL OF
+1914
+
+
+I
+
+Awake, ye nations, slumbering supine,
+  Who round enring the European fray!
+  Heard ye the trumpet sound? "The Day! the Day!
+The last that shall on England's Empire shine!
+The Parliament that broke the Right Divine
+  Shall see her realm of reason swept away,
+  And lesser nations shall the sword obey--
+The sword o'er all carve the great world's design!"
+
+So on the English Channel boasts the foe
+  On whose imperial brow death's helmet nods.
+Look where his hosts o'er bloody Belgium go,
+  And mix a nation's past with blazing sods!
+A kingdom's waste! a people's homeless woe!
+  Man's broken Word, and violated gods!
+
+
+II
+
+Far fall the day when England's realm shall see
+  The sunset of dominion! Her increase
+  Abolishes the man-dividing seas,
+And frames the brotherhood on earth to be!
+She, in free peoples planting sovereignty,
+  Orbs half the civil world in British peace;
+  And though time dispossess her, and she cease,
+Rome-like she greatens in man's memory.
+
+Oh, many a crown shall sink in war's turmoil,
+  And many a new republic light the sky,
+Fleets sweep the ocean, nations till the soil,
+  Genius be born and generations die.
+Orient and Occident together toil,
+  Ere such a mighty work man rears on high!
+
+
+III
+
+Hearken, the feet of the Destroyer tread
+  The wine-press of the nations; fast the blood
+  Pours from the side of Europe; in the flood
+On the septentrional watershed
+The rivers of fair France are running red!
+  England, the mother-aerie of our brood,
+  That on the summit of dominion stood,
+Shakes in the blast: heaven battles overhead!
+
+Lift up thy head, O Rheims, of ages heir
+  That treasured up in thee their glorious sum;
+Upon whose brow, prophetically fair,
+  Flamed the great morrow of the world to come;
+Haunt with thy beauty this volcanic air
+  Ere yet thou close, O Flower of Christendom!
+
+
+IV
+
+As when the shadow of the sun's eclipse
+  Sweeps on the earth, and spreads a spectral air,
+  As if the universe were dying there,
+On continent and isle the darkness dips
+Unwonted gloom, and on the Atlantic slips;
+  So in the night the Belgian cities flare
+  Horizon-wide; the wandering people fare
+Along the roads, and load the fleeing ships.
+
+And westward borne that planetary sweep
+  Darkening o'er England and her times to be,
+Already steps upon the ocean-deep!
+  Watch well, my country, that unearthly sea,
+Lest when thou thinkest not, and in thy sleep,
+  Unapt for war, that gloom enshadow thee.
+
+
+V
+
+I pray for peace; yet peace is but a prayer.
+  How many wars have been in my brief years!
+  All races and all faiths, both hemispheres,
+My eyes have seen embattled everywhere
+The wide earth through; yet do I not despair
+  Of peace, that slowly through far ages nears;
+  Though not to me the golden morn appears,
+My faith is perfect in time's issue fair.
+
+For man doth build on an eternal scale,
+  And his ideals are framed of hope deferred;
+The millennium came not; yet Christ did not fail,
+  Though ever unaccomplished is His word;
+Him Prince of Peace, though unenthroned, we hail,
+  Supreme when in all bosoms He be heard.
+
+
+VI
+
+This is my faith, and my mind's heritage,
+  Wherein I toil, though in a lonely place,
+  Who yet world-wide survey the human race
+Unequal from wild nature disengage
+Body and soul, and life's old strife assuage;
+  Still must abide, till heaven perfect its grace,
+  And love grown wisdom sweeten in man's face,
+Alike the Christian and the heathen rage.
+
+The tutelary genius of mankind
+  Ripens by slow degrees the final State,
+That in the soul shall its foundations find
+  And only in victorious love grow great;
+Patient the heart must be, humble the mind,
+  That doth the greater births of time await!
+
+
+VII
+
+Whence not unmoved I see the nations form
+  From Dover to the fountains of the Rhine,
+  A hundred leagues, the scarlet battle-line,
+And by the Vistula great armies swarm,
+A vaster flood; rather my breast grows warm,
+  Seeing all peoples of the earth combine
+  Under one standard, with one countersign,
+Grown brothers in the universal storm.
+
+And never through the wide world yet there rang
+  A mightier summons! O Thou who from the side
+Of Athens and the loins of Casar sprang,
+  Strike, Europe, with half the coming world allied
+For those ideals for which, since Homer sang,
+  The hosts of thirty centuries have died.
+
+_George Edward Woodberry_
+
+
+
+
+THE WAR FILMS
+
+
+O living pictures of the dead,
+  O songs without a sound,
+O fellowship whose phantom tread
+  Hallows a phantom ground--
+How in a gleam have these revealed
+  The faith we had not found.
+
+We have sought God in a cloudy Heaven,
+  We have passed by God on earth:
+His seven sins and his sorrows seven,
+  His wayworn mood and mirth,
+Like a ragged cloak have hid from us
+  The secret of his birth.
+
+Brother of men, when now I see
+  The lads go forth in line,
+Thou knowest my heart is hungry in me
+  As for thy bread and wine;
+Thou knowest my heart is bowed in me
+  To take their death for mine.
+
+_Henry Newbolt_
+
+
+
+
+THE SEARCHLIGHTS
+
+
+[Political morality differs from individual morality, because there is
+no power above the State.--_General von Bernhardt_]
+
+Shadow by shadow, stripped for fight,
+  The lean black cruisers search the sea.
+Night-long their level shafts of light
+  Revolve, and find no enemy.
+Only they know each leaping wave
+May hide the lightning, and their grave.
+
+And in the land they guard so well
+  Is there no silent watch to keep?
+An age is dying, and the bell
+  Rings midnight on a vaster deep.
+But over all its waves, once more
+The searchlights move, from shore to shore.
+
+And captains that we thought were dead,
+  And dreamers that we thought were dumb,
+And voices that we thought were fled,
+  Arise, and call us, and we come;
+And "Search in thine own soul," they cry;
+"For there, too, lurks thine enemy."
+
+Search for the foe in thine own soul,
+  The sloth, the intellectual pride;
+The trivial jest that veils the goal
+  For which, our fathers lived and died;
+The lawless dreams, the cynic Art,
+That rend thy nobler self apart.
+
+Not far, not far into the night,
+  These level swords of light can pierce;
+Yet for her faith does England fight,
+  Her faith in this our universe,
+Believing Truth and Justice draw
+From founts of everlasting law;
+
+The law that rules the stars, our stay,
+  Our compass through the world's wide sea.
+The one sure light, the one sure way,
+  The one firm base of Liberty;
+The one firm road that men have trod
+Through Chaos to the throne of God.
+
+Therefore a Power above the State,
+  The unconquerable Power, returns,
+The fire, the fire that made her great
+  Once more upon her altar burns,
+Once more, redeemed and healed and whole,
+She moves to the Eternal Goal.
+
+_Alfred Noyes_
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTMAS: 1915
+
+
+Now is the midnight of the nations: dark
+  Even as death, beside her blood-dark seas,
+  Earth, like a mother in birth agonies,
+Screams in her travail, and the planets hark
+Her million-throated terror. Naked, stark,
+  Her torso writhes enormous, and her knees
+  Shudder against the shadowed Pleiades,
+Wrenching the night's imponderable arc.
+
+Christ! What shall be delivered to the morn
+  Out of these pangs, if ever indeed another
+  Morn shall succeed this night, or this vast mother
+Survive to know the blood-spent offspring, torn
+  From her racked flesh?--What splendour from the smother?
+What new-wing'd world, or mangled god still-born?
+
+_Percy MacKaye_
+
+
+
+
+"MEN WHO MARCH AWAY"
+
+(SONG OF THE SOLDIERS)
+
+
+What of the faith and fire within us
+  Men who march away
+  Ere the barn-cocks say
+  Night is growing gray,
+To hazards whence no tears can win us;
+What of the faith and fire within us
+  Men who march away!
+
+Is it a purblind prank, O think you,
+  Friend with the musing eye
+  Who watch us stepping by,
+  With doubt and dolorous sigh?
+Can much pondering so hoodwink you?
+Is it a purblind prank, O think you,
+  Friend with the musing eye?
+
+Nay. We see well what we are doing,
+  Though some may not see--
+  Dalliers as they be--
+  England's need are we;
+Her distress would leave us rueing;
+Nay. We well see what we are doing,
+  Though some may not see!
+
+In our heart of hearts believing
+  Victory crowns the just,
+  And that braggarts must
+  Surely bite the dust,
+Press we to the field ungrieving,
+In our heart of hearts believing
+  Victory crowns the just.
+
+Hence the faith and fire within us
+  Men who march away
+  Ere the barn-cocks say
+  Night is growing gray,
+To hazards whence no tears can win us;
+Hence the faith and fire within us
+  Men who march away.
+
+_Thomas Hardy_
+
+_September 5, 1914_
+
+
+
+
+WE WILLED IT NOT
+
+
+We willed it not. We have not lived in hate,
+Loving too well the shires of England thrown
+From sea to sea to covet your estate,
+Or wish one flight of fortune from your throne.
+
+We had grown proud because the nations stood
+Hoping together against the calumny
+That, tortured of its old barbarian blood,
+Barbarian still the heart of man should be.
+
+Builders there are who name you overlord,
+Building with us the citadels of light,
+Who hold as we this chartered sin abhorred,
+And cry you risen Caesar of the Night.
+
+Beethoven speaks with Milton on this day,
+And Shakespeare's word with Goethe's beats the sky,
+In witness of the birthright you betray,
+In witness of the vision you deny.
+
+We love the hearth, the quiet hills, the song,
+The friendly gossip come from every land;
+And very peace were now a nameless wrong--
+You thrust this bitter quarrel to our hand.
+
+For this your pride the tragic armies go,
+And the grim navies watch along the seas;
+You trade in death, you mock at life, you throw
+To God the tumult of your blasphemies.
+
+You rob us of our love-right. It is said.
+In treason to the world, you are enthroned,
+We rise, and, by the yet ungathered dead,
+Not lightly shall the treason be atoned.
+
+_John Drinkwater_
+
+
+
+
+THE DEATH OF PEACE
+
+
+Now slowly sinks the day-long labouring Sun
+Behind the tranquil trees and old church-tower;
+And we who watch him know our day is done;
+For us too comes the evening--and the hour.
+
+The sunbeams slanting through those ancient trees,
+The sunlit lichens burning on the byre,
+The lark descending, and the homing bees,
+Proclaim the sweet relief all things desire.
+
+Golden the river brims beneath the west,
+And holy peace to all the world is given;
+The songless stockdove preens her ruddied breast;
+The blue smoke windeth like a prayer to heaven.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+O old, old England, land of golden peace,
+Thy fields are spun with gossameres of gold,
+And golden garners gather thy increase,
+And plenty crowns thy loveliness untold.
+
+By sunlight or by starlight ever thou
+Art excellent in beauty manifold;
+The still star victory ever gems thy brow;
+Age cannot age thee, ages make thee old.
+
+Thy beauty brightens with the evening sun
+Across the long-lit meads and distant spire:
+So sleep thou well--like his thy labour done;
+Rest in thy glory as he rests in fire.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But even in this hour of soft repose
+A gentle sadness chides us like a friend--
+The sorrow of the joy that overflows,
+The burden of the beauty that must end.
+
+And from the fading sunset comes a cry,
+And in the twilight voices wailing past,
+Like wild-swans calling, "When we rest we die,
+And woe to them that linger and are last";
+
+And as the Sun sinks, sudden in heav'n new born
+There shines an armed Angel like a Star,
+Who cries above the darkling world in scorn,
+"God comes to Judgment. Learn ye what ye are."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From fire to umber fades the sunset-gold,
+From umber into silver and twilight;
+The infant flowers their orisons have told
+And turn together folded for the night;
+
+The garden urns are black against the eve;
+The white moth flitters through the fragrant glooms;
+How beautiful the heav'ns!--But yet we grieve
+And wander restless from the lighted rooms.
+
+For through the world to-night a murmur thrills
+As at some new-born prodigy of time--
+Peace dies like twilight bleeding on the hills,
+And Darkness creeps to hide the hateful crime.
+
+
+Art thou no more, O Maiden Heaven-born
+O Peace, bright Angel of the windless morn?
+Who comest down to bless our furrow'd fields,
+Or stand like Beauty smiling 'mid the corn:
+
+Mistress of mirth and ease and summer dreams,
+Who lingerest among the woods and streams
+To help us heap the harvest 'neath the moon,
+And homeward laughing lead the lumb'ring teams:
+
+Who teachest to our children thy wise lore;
+Who keepest full the goodman's golden store;
+Who crownest Life with plenty, Death with flow'rs;
+Peace, Queen of Kindness--but of earth, no more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Not thine but ours the fault, thy care was vain;
+For this that we have done be ours the pain;
+Thou gayest much, as He who gave us all,
+And as we slew Him for it thou art slain.
+
+Heav'n left to men the moulding of their fate:
+To live as wolves or pile the pillar'd State--
+Like boars and bears to grunt and growl in mire,
+Or dwell aloft, effulgent gods, elate.
+
+Thou liftedst us: we slew and with thee fell--
+From golden thrones of wisdom weeping fell.
+Fate rends the chaplets from our feeble brows;
+The spires of Heaven fade in fogs of hell.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She faints, she falls; her dying eyes are dim;
+Her fingers play with those bright buds she bore
+To please us, but that she can bring no more;
+And dying yet she smiles--as Christ on him
+Who slew Him slain. Her eyes so beauteous
+Are lit with tears shed--not for herself but us.
+
+The gentle Beings of the hearth and home;
+The lovely Dryads of her aisled woods;
+The Angels that do dwell in solitudes
+Where she dwelleth; and joyous Spirits that roam
+To bless her bleating flocks and fruitful lands;
+Are gather'd there to weep, and kiss her dying hands.
+
+"Look, look," they cry, "she is not dead, she breathes!
+And we have staunched the damned wound and deep,
+The cavern-carven wound. She doth but sleep
+And will awake. Bring wine, and new-wound wreaths
+Wherewith to crown awaking her dear head,
+And make her Queen again."--But no, for Peace was dead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And then there came black Lords; and Dwarfs obscene
+With lavish tongues; and Trolls; and treacherous Things
+Like loose-lipp'd Councillors and cruel Kings
+Who sharpen lies and daggers subterrene:
+And flashed their evil eyes and weeping cried,
+"We ruled the world for Peace. By her own hand she died."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In secret he made sharp the bitter blade,
+And poison'd it with bane of lies and drew,
+And stabb'd--O God! the Cruel Cripple slew;
+And cowards fled or lent him trembling aid,
+She fell and died--in all the tale of time
+The direst deed e'er done, the most accursed crime.
+
+_Ronald Ross_
+
+
+
+
+IN WAR-TIME
+
+(AN AMERICAN HOMEWARD-BOUND)
+
+
+Further and further we leave the scene
+  Of war--and of England's care;
+I try to keep my mind serene--
+  But my heart stays there;
+
+For a distant song of pain and wrong
+  My spirit doth deep confuse,
+And I sit all day on the deck, and long--
+  And long for news!
+
+I seem to see them in battle-line--
+  Heroes with hearts of gold,
+But of their victory a sign
+  The Fates withhold;
+
+And the hours too tardy-footed pass,
+  The voiceless hush grows dense
+'Mid the imaginings, alas!
+  That feed suspense.
+
+Oh, might I lie on the wind, or fly
+  In the wilful sea-bird's track,
+Would I hurry on, with a homesick cry--
+  Or hasten back?
+
+_Florence Earle Coates_
+
+
+
+
+THE ANVIL
+
+
+Burned from the ore's rejected dross,
+The iron whitens in the heat.
+With plangent strokes of pain and loss
+The hammers on the iron beat.
+Searched by the fire, through death and dole
+We feel the iron in our soul.
+
+O dreadful Forge! if torn and bruised
+The heart, more urgent comes our cry
+Not to be spared but to be used,
+Brain, sinew, and spirit, before we die.
+Beat out the iron, edge it keen,
+And shape us to the end we mean!
+
+_Laurence Binyon_
+
+
+
+
+THE FOOL RINGS HIS BELLS
+
+
+Come, Death, I'd have a word with thee;
+And thou, poor Innocency;
+And Love--a lad with broken wing;
+And Pity, too:
+The Fool shall sing to you,
+As Fools will sing.
+
+Ay, music hath small sense,
+And a tune's soon told,
+And Earth is old,
+And my poor wits are dense;
+Yet have I secrets,--dark, my dear,
+To breathe you all: Come near.
+And lest some hideous listener tells,
+I'll ring my bells.
+
+They're all at war!
+Yes, yes, their bodies go
+'Neath burning sun and icy star
+To chaunted songs of woe,
+Dragging cold cannon through a mud
+Of rain and blood;
+The new moon glinting hard on eyes
+Wide with insanities!
+
+Hush!... I use words
+I hardly know the meaning of;
+And the mute birds
+Are glancing at Love!
+From out their shade of leaf and flower,
+Trembling at treacheries
+
+Which even in noonday cower,
+Heed, heed not what I said
+Of frenzied hosts of men,
+More fools than I,
+On envy, hatred fed,
+Who kill, and die--
+Spake I not plainly, then?
+Yet Pity whispered, "Why?"
+
+Thou silly thing, off to thy daisies go.
+Mine was not news for child to know,
+And Death--no ears hath. He hath supped where creep
+Eyeless worms in hush of sleep;
+Yet, when he smiles, the hand he draws
+Athwart his grinning jaws
+Faintly their thin bones rattle, and.... There, there;
+Hearken how my bells in the air
+Drive away care!...
+
+Nay, but a dream I had
+Of a world all mad.
+Not a simple happy mad like me,
+Who am mad like an empty scene
+Of water and willow tree,
+Where the wind hath been;
+But that foul Satan-mad,
+Who rots in his own head,
+And counts the dead,
+Not honest one--and two--
+But for the ghosts they were,
+Brave, faithful, true,
+When, head in air,
+In Earth's dear green and blue
+Heaven they did share
+With Beauty who bade them there....
+
+There, now! he goes--
+Old Bones; I've wearied him.
+Ay, and the light doth dim,
+And asleep's the rose,
+And tired Innocence
+In dreams is hence....
+Come, Love, my lad,
+Nodding that drowsy head,
+'T is time thy prayers were said.
+
+_Walter de la Mare_
+
+
+
+
+THE ROAD TO DIEPPE
+
+
+[Concerning the experiences of a journey on foot through the night of
+August 4, 1914 (the night after the formal declaration of war between
+England and Germany), from a town near Amiens, in France, to Dieppe,
+a distance of somewhat more than forty miles.]
+
+Before I knew, the Dawn was on the road,
+Close at my side, so silently he came
+Nor gave a sign of salutation, save
+To touch with light my sleeve and make the way
+Appear as if a shining countenance
+Had looked on it. Strange was this radiant Youth,
+As I, to these fair, fertile parts of France,
+Where Caesar with his legions once had passed,
+And where the Kaiser's Uhlans yet would pass
+Or e'er another moon should cope with clouds
+For mastery of these same fields.--To-night
+(And but a month has gone since I walked there)
+Well might the Kaiser write, as Caesar wrote,
+In his new Commentaries on a Gallic war,
+"_Fortissimi Belgae_."--A moon ago!
+Who would have then divined that dead would lie
+Like swaths of grain beneath the harvest moon
+Upon these lands the ancient Belgae held,
+From Normandy beyond renowned Liège!--
+
+But it was out of that dread August night
+From which all Europe woke to war, that we,
+This beautiful Dawn-Youth, and I, had come,
+He from afar. Beyond grim Petrograd
+He'd waked the moujik from his peaceful dreams,
+Bid the muezzin call to morning prayer
+Where minarets rise o'er the Golden Horn,
+And driven shadows from the Prussian march
+To lie beneath the lindens of the _stadt_.
+Softly he'd stirred the bells to ring at Rheims,
+He'd knocked at high Montmartre, hardly asleep;
+Heard the sweet carillon of doomed Louvain,
+Boylike, had tarried for a moment's play
+Amid the traceries of Amiens,
+And then was hast'ning on the road to Dieppe,
+When he o'ertook me drowsy from the hours
+Through which I'd walked, with no companions else
+Than ghostly kilometer posts that stood
+As sentinels' of space along the way.--
+Often, in doubt, I'd paused to question one,
+With nervous hands, as they who read Moon-type;
+And more than once I'd caught a moment's sleep
+Beside the highway, in the dripping grass,
+While one of these white sentinels stood guard,
+Knowing me for a friend, who loves the road,
+And best of all by night, when wheels do sleep
+And stars alone do walk abroad.--But once
+Three watchful shadows, deeper than the dark,
+Laid hands on me and searched me for the marks
+Of traitor or of spy, only to find
+Over my heart the badge of loyalty.--
+With wish for _bon voyage_ they gave me o'er
+To the white guards who led me on again.
+
+Thus Dawn o'ertook me and with magic speech
+Made me forget the night as we strode on.
+Where'er he looked a miracle was wrought:
+A tree grew from the darkness at a glance;
+A hut was thatched; a new chateau was reared
+Of stone, as weathered as the church at Caen;
+Gray blooms were coloured suddenly in red;
+A flag was flung across the eastern sky.--
+Nearer at hand, he made me then aware
+Of peasant women bending in the fields,
+Cradling and gleaning by the first scant light,
+Their sons and husbands somewhere o'er the edge
+Of these green-golden fields which they had sowed,
+But will not reap,--out somewhere on the march,
+God but knows where and if they come again.
+One fallow field he pointed out to me
+Where but the day before a peasant ploughed,
+Dreaming of next year's fruit, and there his plough
+Stood now mid-field, his horses commandeered,
+A monstrous sable crow perched on the beam.
+
+Before I knew, the Dawn was on the road,
+Far from my side, so silently he went,
+Catching his golden helmet as he ran,
+And hast'ning on along the dun straight way,
+Where old men's sabots now began to clack
+And withered women, knitting, led their cows,
+On, on to call the men of Kitchener
+Down to their coasts,--I shouting after him:
+"O Dawn, would you had let the world sleep on
+Till all its armament were turned to rust,
+Nor waked it to this day of hideous hate,
+Of man's red murder and of woman's woe!"
+
+Famished and lame, I came at last to Dieppe,
+But Dawn had made his way across the sea,
+And, as I climbed with heavy feet the cliff,
+Was even then upon the sky-built towers
+Of that great capital where nations all,
+Teuton, Italian, Gallic, English, Slav,
+Forget long hates in one consummate faith.
+
+_John Finley_
+
+
+
+
+TO FELLOW TRAVELLERS IN GREECE
+
+MARCH-SEPTEMBER, 1914
+
+
+'T was in the piping tune of peace
+We trod the sacred soil of Greece,
+Nor thought, where the Ilissus runs,
+Of Teuton craft or Teuton guns;
+
+Nor dreamt that, ere the year was spent,
+Their iron challenge insolent
+Would round the world's horizons pour,
+From Europe to the Australian shore.
+
+The tides of war had ebb'd away
+From Trachis and Thermopylae,
+Long centuries had come and gone
+Since that fierce day at Marathon;
+
+Freedom was firmly based, and we
+Wall'd by our own encircling sea;
+The ancient passions dead, and men
+Battl'd with ledger and with pen.
+
+So seem'd it, but to them alone
+The wisdom of the gods is known;
+Lest freedom's price decline, from far
+Zeus hurl'd the thunderbolt of war.
+
+And so once more the Persian steel
+The armies of the Greeks must feel,
+And once again a Xerxes know
+The virtue of a Spartan foe.
+
+Thus may the cloudy fates unroll'd
+Retrace the starry circles old,
+And the recurrent heavens decree
+A Periclean dynasty.
+
+_W. Macneile Dixon_
+
+
+
+
+"WHEN THERE IS PEACE"
+
+
+"_When there is Peace our land no more
+Will be the land we knew of yore._"
+  Thus do our facile seers foretell
+  The truth that none can buy or sell
+And e'en the wisest must ignore.
+
+When we have bled at every pore,
+Shall we still strive for gear and store?
+  Will it be Heaven? Will it be Hell,
+    When there is Peace?
+
+This let us pray for, this implore:
+That all base dreams thrust out at door,
+  We may in loftier aims excel
+  And, like men waking from a spell,
+Grow stronger, nobler, than before,
+    When there is Peace.
+
+_Austin Dobson_
+
+
+
+
+A PRAYER IN TIME OF WAR
+
+
+[ The war will change many things in art and life, and among them,
+it is to be hoped, many of our own ideas as to what is, and what is not,
+"intellectual."]
+
+Thou, whose deep ways are in the sea,
+  Whose footsteps are not known,
+To-night a world that turned from Thee
+  Is waiting--at Thy Throne.
+
+The towering Babels that we raised
+  Where scoffing sophists brawl,
+The little Antichrists we praised--
+  The night is on them all.
+
+_The fool hath said.... The fool hath said...._
+  And we, who deemed him wise,
+We who believed that Thou wast dead,
+  How should we seek Thine eyes?
+
+How should we seek to Thee for power
+  Who scorned Thee yesterday?
+How should we kneel, in this dread hour?
+  Lord, teach us how to pray!
+
+Grant us the single heart, once more,
+  That mocks no sacred thing,
+The Sword of Truth our fathers wore
+  When Thou wast Lord and King.
+
+Let darkness unto darkness tell
+  Our deep unspoken prayer,
+For, while our souls in darkness dwell,
+  We know that Thou art there.
+
+_Alfred Noyes_
+
+
+
+
+THEN AND NOW
+
+
+      When battles were fought
+With a chivalrous sense of should and ought,
+      In spirit men said,
+      "End we quick or dead,
+      Honour is some reward!
+Let us fight fair--for our own best or worst;
+      So, Gentlemen of the Guard,
+          Fire first!"
+
+      In the open they stood,
+Man to man in his knightlihood:
+      They would not deign
+      To profit by a stain
+      On the honourable rules,
+Knowing that practise perfidy no man durst
+      Who in the heroic schools
+          Was nurst.
+
+      But now, behold, what
+Is war with those where honour is not!
+      Rama laments
+      Its dead innocents;
+      Herod howls: "Sly slaughter
+Rules now! Let us, by modes once called accurst,
+      Overhead, under water,
+          Stab first."
+
+_Thomas Hardy_
+
+
+
+
+THE KAISER AND GOD
+
+
+["I rejoice with you in Wilhelm's first victory. How magnificently God
+supported him!"--Telegram from the Kaiser to the Crown Princess.]
+
+Led by Wilhelm, as you tell,
+God has done extremely well;
+You with patronizing nod
+Show that you approve of God.
+Kaiser, face a question new--
+This--does God approve of you?
+
+Broken pledges, treaties torn,
+Your first page of war adorn;
+We on fouler things must look
+Who read further in that book,
+Where you did in time of war
+All that you in peace forswore,
+Where you, barbarously wise,
+Bade your soldiers terrorize,
+
+Where you made--the deed was fine--
+Women screen your firing line.
+Villages burned down to dust,
+Torture, murder, bestial lust,
+Filth too foul for printer's ink,
+Crime from which the apes would shrink--
+Strange the offerings that you press
+On the God of Righteousness!
+
+Kaiser, when you'd decorate
+Sons or friends who serve your State,
+Not that Iron Cross bestow,
+But a cross of wood, and so--
+So remind the world that you
+Have made Calvary anew.
+
+Kaiser, when you'd kneel in prayer
+Look upon your hands, and there
+Let that deep and awful stain
+From the Wood of children slain
+Burn your very soul with shame,
+Till you dare not breathe that Name
+That now you glibly advertise--
+God as one of your allies.
+
+Impious braggart, you forget;
+God is not your conscript yet;
+You shall learn in dumb amaze
+That His ways are not your ways,
+That the mire through which you trod
+Is not the high white road of God.
+
+_To Whom, whichever way the combat rolls,
+We, fighting to the end, commend our souls._
+
+_Barry Pain_
+
+
+
+
+THE SUPERMAN
+
+
+The horror-haunted Belgian plains riven by shot and shell
+Are strewn with her undaunted sons who stayed the jaws of hell.
+In every sunny vale of France death is the countersign.
+The purest blood in Britain's veins is being poured like wine.
+
+Far, far across the crimsoned map the impassioned armies sweep.
+Destruction flashes down the sky and penetrates the deep.
+The Dreadnought knows the silent dread, and seas incarnadine
+Attest the carnival of strife, the madman's battle scene.
+
+Relentless, savage, hot, and grim the infuriate columns press
+Where terror simulates disdain and danger is largess,
+Where greedy youth claims death for bride and agony seems bliss.
+It is the cause, the cause, my soul! which sanctifies all this.
+
+Ride, Cossacks, ride! Charge, Turcos, charge! The fateful hour has come.
+Let all the guns of Britain roar or be forever dumb.
+The Superman has burst his bonds. With Kultur-flag unfurled
+And prayer on lip he runs amuck, imperilling the world.
+
+The impious creed that might is right in him personified
+Bids all creation bend before the insatiate Teuton pride,
+Which, nourished on Valhalla dreams of empire unconfined,
+Would make the cannon and the sword the despots of mankind.
+
+Efficient, thorough, strong, and brave--his vision is to kill.
+Force is the hearthstone of his might, the pole-star of his will.
+His forges glow malevolent: their minions never tire
+To deck the goddess of his lust whose twins are blood and fire.
+
+O world grown sick with butchery and manifold distress!
+O broken Belgium robbed of all save grief and ghastliness!
+Should Prussian power enslave the world and arrogance prevail,
+Let chaos come, let Moloch rule, and Christ give place to Baal.
+
+_Robert Grant_
+
+
+
+
+THREE HILLS
+
+
+There is a hill in England,
+  Green fields and a school I know,
+Where the balls fly fast in summer,
+  And the whispering elm-trees grow,
+      A little hill, a dear hill,
+  And the playing fields below.
+
+There is a hill in Flanders,
+  Heaped with a thousand slain,
+Where the shells fly night and noontide
+  And the ghosts that died in vain,--
+      A little hill, a hard hill
+  To the souls that died in pain.
+
+There is a hill in Jewry,
+  Three crosses pierce the sky,
+On the midmost He is dying
+  To save all those who die,--
+      A little hill, a kind hill
+  To souls in jeopardy.
+
+_Everard Owen_
+
+_Harrow, December, 1915_
+
+
+
+
+THE RETURN
+
+
+I heard the rumbling guns. I saw the smoke,
+  The unintelligible shock of hosts that still,
+Far off, unseeing, strove and strove again;
+  And Beauty flying naked down the hill
+
+From morn to eve: and the stern night cried Peace!
+  And shut the strife in darkness: all was still,
+Then slowly crept a triumph on the dark--
+  And I heard Beauty singing up the hill.
+
+_John Freeman_
+
+
+
+
+THE MOBILIZATION IN BRITTANY
+
+
+I
+
+It was silent in the street.
+I did not know until a woman told me,
+Sobbing over the muslin she sold me.
+Then I went out and walked to the square
+And saw a few dazed people standing there.
+
+And then the drums beat, the drums beat!
+O then the drums beat!
+And hurrying, stumbling through the street
+Came the hurrying stumbling feet.
+O I have heard the drums beat
+For war!
+I have heard the townsfolk come,
+I have heard the roll and thunder of the nearest drum
+As the drummer stopped and cried, "Hear!
+Be strong! The summons comes! Prepare!"
+Closing he prayed us to be calm....
+
+And there was calm in my heart of the desert, of the dead sea,
+Of vast plains of the West before the coming storm,
+And there was calm in their eyes like the last calm that shall be.
+
+And then the drum beat,
+The fatal drum, beat,
+And the drummer marched through the street
+And down to another square,
+And the drummer above took up the beat
+And sent it onward where
+Huddled, we stood and heard the drums roll,
+And then a bell began to toll.
+
+O I have heard the thunder of drums
+Crashing into simple poor homes.
+I have heard the drums roll "Farewell!"
+I have heard the tolling cathedral bell.
+Will it ever peal again?
+Shall I ever smile or feel again?
+What was joy? What was pain?
+
+For I have heard the drums beat,
+I have seen the drummer striding from street to street,
+Crying, "Be strong! Hear what I must tell!"
+While the drums roared and rolled and beat
+For war!
+
+
+II
+
+Last night the men of this region were leaving. Now they are far.
+Rough and strong they are, proud and gay they are.
+So this is the way of war....
+
+The train was full and we all shouted as it pulled away.
+They sang an old war-song, they were true to themselves, they were gay!
+We might have thought they were going for a holiday--
+
+Except for something in the air,
+Except for the weeping of the ruddy old women of Finistère.
+The younger women do not weep. They dream and stare.
+
+They seem to be walking in dreams. They seem not to know
+It is their homes, their happiness, vanishing so.
+(Every strong man between twenty and forty must go.)
+
+They sang an old war-song. I have heard it often in other days,
+But never before when War was walking the world's highways.
+They sang, they shouted, the _Marseillaise!_
+
+The train went and another has gone, but none, coming, has brought word.
+Though you may know, you, out in the world, we have not heard,
+We are not sure that the great battalions have stirred--
+
+Except for something, something in the air,
+Except for the weeping of the wild old women of Finistère.
+How long will the others dream and stare?
+
+The train went. The strong men of this region are all away, afar.
+Rough and strong they are, proud and gay they are.
+So this is the way of war....
+
+_Grace Fallow Norton_
+
+
+
+
+THE TOY BAND
+
+
+(A SONG OF THE GREAT RETREAT)
+
+Dreary lay the long road, dreary lay the town,
+  Lights out and never a glint o' moon:
+Weary lay the stragglers, half a thousand down,
+  Sad sighed the weary big Dragoon.
+"Oh! if I'd a drum here to make them take the road again,
+  Oh! if I'd a fife to wheedle, Come, boys, come!
+You that mean to fight it out, wake and take your load again,
+  Fall in! Fall in! Follow the fife and drum!
+
+"Hey, but here's a toy shop, here's a drum for me,
+  Penny whistles too to play the tune!
+Half a thousand dead men soon shall hear and see
+  We're a band!" said the weary big Dragoon.
+"Rubadub! Rubadub! Wake and take the road again,
+  Wheedle-deedle-deedle-dee, Come, boys, come!
+You that mean to fight it out, wake and take your load again,
+  Fall in! Fall in! Follow the fife and drum!"
+
+Cheerly goes the dark road, cheerly goes the night,
+  Cheerly goes the blood to keep the beat:
+Half a thousand dead men marching on to fight
+  With a little penny drum to lift their feet.
+Rubadub! Rubadub! Wake and take the road again,
+  Wheedle-deedle-deedle-dee, Come, boys, come!
+You that mean to fight it out, wake and take your load again,
+  Fall in! Fall in! Follow the fife and drum!
+
+As long as there's an Englishman to ask a tale of me,
+  As long as I can tell the tale aright,
+We'll not forget the penny whistle's wheedle-deedle-dee
+  And the big Dragoon a-beating down the night,
+Rubadub! Rubadub! Wake and take the road again,
+  Wheedle-deedle-deedle-dee, Come, boys, come!
+You that mean to fight it out, wake and take your load again,
+  Fall in! Fall in! Follow the fife and drum!
+
+_Henry Newbolt_
+
+
+
+
+THOMAS OF THE LIGHT HEART
+
+
+Facing the guns, he jokes as well
+    As any Judge upon the Bench;
+Between the crash of shell and shell
+    His laughter rings along the trench;
+He seems immensely tickled by a
+Projectile which he calls a "Black Maria."
+
+He whistles down the day-long road,
+    And, when the chilly shadows fall
+And heavier hangs the weary load,
+    Is he down-hearted? Not at all.
+'T is then he takes a light and airy
+View of the tedious route to Tipperary.
+
+His songs are not exactly hymns;
+    He never learned them in the choir;
+And yet they brace his dragging limbs
+    Although they miss the sacred fire;
+Although his choice and cherished gems
+Do not include "The Watch upon the Thames."
+
+He takes to fighting as a game;
+    He does no talking, through his hat,
+Of holy missions; all the same
+    He has his faith--be sure of that;
+He'll not disgrace his sporting breed,
+Nor play what isn't cricket. There's his creed.
+
+_Owen Seaman_
+
+_October, 1914_
+
+
+
+
+IN THE TRENCHES
+
+
+As I lay in the trenches
+Under the Hunter's Moon,
+My mind ran to the lenches
+Cut in a Wiltshire down.
+
+I saw their long black shadows,
+The beeches in the lane,
+The gray church in the meadows
+And my white cottage--plain.
+
+Thinks I, the down lies dreaming
+Under that hot moon's eye,
+Which sees the shells fly screaming
+And men and horses die.
+
+And what makes she, I wonder,
+Of the horror and the blood,
+And what's her luck, to sunder
+The evil from the good?
+
+'T was more than I could compass,
+For how was I to think
+With such infernal rumpus
+In such a blasted stink?
+
+But here's a thought to tally
+With t'other. That moon sees
+A shrouded German valley
+With woods and ghostly trees.
+
+And maybe there's a river
+As we have got at home
+With poplar-trees aquiver
+And clots of whirling foam.
+
+And over there some fellow,
+A German and a foe,
+Whose gills are turning yellow
+As sure as mine are so,
+
+Watches that riding glory
+Apparel'd in her gold,
+And craves to hear the story
+Her frozen lips enfold.
+
+And if he sees as clearly
+As I do where her shrine
+Must fall, he longs as dearly.
+With heart as full as mine.
+
+_Maurice Hewlett_
+
+
+
+
+THE GUARDS CAME THROUGH
+
+
+Men of the Twenty-first
+  Up by the Chalk Pit Wood,
+Weak with our wounds and our thirst,
+  Wanting our sleep and our food,
+After a day and a night--
+  God, shall we ever forget!
+Beaten and broke in the fight,
+  But sticking it--sticking it yet.
+Trying to hold the line,
+  Fainting and spent and done,
+Always the thud and the whine,
+  Always the yell of the Hun!
+Northumberland, Lancaster, York,
+  Durham and Somerset,
+Fighting alone, worn to the bone,
+  But sticking it--sticking it yet.
+
+Never a message of hope!
+  Never a word of cheer!
+Fronting Hill 70's shell-swept slope,
+  With the dull dead plain in our rear.
+Always the whine of the shell,
+  Always the roar of its burst,
+Always the tortures of hell,
+  As waiting and wincing we cursed
+Our luck and the guns and the _Boche_,
+  When our Corporal shouted, "Stand to!"
+And I heard some one cry, "Clear the front for the Guards!"
+  And the Guards came through.
+
+Our throats they were parched and hot,
+  But Lord, if you'd heard the cheers!
+Irish and Welsh and Scot,
+  Coldstream and Grenadiers.
+Two brigades, if you please,
+  Dressing as straight as a hem,
+We--we were down on our knees,
+  Praying for us and for them!
+Lord, I could speak for a week,
+  But how could you understand!
+How should _your_ cheeks be wet,
+  Such feelin's don't come to _you_.
+But when can me or my mates forget,
+  When the Guards came through?
+
+"Five yards left extend!"
+  It passed from rank to rank.
+Line after line with never a bend,
+  And a touch of the London swank.
+A trifle of swank and dash,
+  Cool as a home parade,
+Twinkle and glitter and flash,
+  Flinching never a shade,
+With the shrapnel right in their face
+  Doing their Hyde Park stunt,
+Keeping their swing at an easy pace,
+  Arms at the trail, eyes front!
+Man, it was great to see!
+  Man, it was fine to do!
+It's a cot and a hospital ward for me,
+But I'll tell 'em in Blighty, wherever I be,
+  How the Guards came through.
+
+_Arthur Conan Doyle_
+
+
+
+
+THE PASSENGERS OF A RETARDED SUBMERSIBLE
+
+NOVEMBER, 1916
+
+
+THE AMERICAN PEOPLE:
+What was it kept you so long, brave German submersible?
+We have been very anxious lest matters had not gone well
+With you and the precious cargo of your country's drugs and dyes.
+But here you are at last, and the sight is good for our eyes,
+Glad to welcome you up and out of the caves of the sea,
+And ready for sale or barter, whatever your will may be.
+
+THE CAPTAIN OF THE SUBMERSIBLE:
+Oh, do not be impatient, good friends of this neutral land,
+That we have been so tardy in reaching your eager strand.
+We were stopped by a curious chance just off the Irish coast,
+Where the mightiest wreck ever was lay crowded with a host
+Of the dead that went down with her; and some prayed us to bring them
+  here
+That they might be at home with their brothers and sisters dear.
+We Germans have tender hearts, and it grieved us sore to say
+We were not a passenger ship, and to most we must answer nay,
+But if from among their hundreds they could somehow a half-score choose
+We thought we could manage to bring them, and we would not refuse.
+They chose, and the women and children that are greeting you here are
+  those
+Ghosts of the women and children that the rest of the hundred chose.
+
+THE AMERICAN PEOPLE:
+What guff are you giving us, Captain? We are able to tell, we hope,
+A dozen ghosts, when we see them, apart from a periscope.
+Come, come, get down to business! For time is money, you know,
+And you must make up in both to us for having been so slow.
+Better tell this story of yours to the submarines, for we
+Know there was no such wreck, and none of your spookery.
+
+THE GHOSTS OF THE LUSITANIA WOMEN AND CHILDREN:
+Oh, kind kin of our murderers, take us back when you sail away;
+Our own kin have forgotten us. O Captain, do not stay!
+But hasten, Captain, hasten: The wreck that lies under the sea
+Shall be ever the home for us this land can never be.
+
+_William Dean Howells_
+
+
+
+
+EDITH CAVELL
+
+
+She was binding the wounds of her enemies when they came--
+  The lint in her hand unrolled.
+They battered the door with their rifle-butts, crashed it in:
+  She faced them gentle and bold.
+
+They haled her before the judges where they sat
+  In their places, helmet on head.
+With question and menace the judges assailed her, "Yes,
+  I have broken your law," she said.
+
+"I have tended the hurt and hidden the hunted, have done
+  As a sister does to a brother,
+Because of a law that is greater than that you have made,
+  Because I could do none other.
+
+"Deal as you will with me. This is my choice to the end,
+  To live in the life I vowed."
+"She is self-confessed," they cried; "she is self-condemned.
+  She shall die, that the rest may be cowed."
+
+In the terrible hour of the dawn, when the veins are cold,
+  They led her forth to the wall.
+"I have loved my land," she said, "but it is not enough:
+  Love requires of me all.
+
+"I will empty my heart of the bitterness, hating none."
+  And sweetness filled her brave
+With a vision of understanding beyond the hour
+  That knelled to the waiting grave.
+
+They bound her eyes, but she stood as if she shone.
+  The rifles it was that shook
+When the hoarse command rang out. They could not endure
+  That last, that defenceless look.
+
+And the officer strode and pistolled her surely, ashamed
+  That men, seasoned in blood,
+Should quail at a woman, only a woman,--
+  As a flower stamped in the mud.
+
+And now that the deed was securely done, in the night
+  When none had known her fate,
+They answered those that had striven for her, day by day:
+  "It is over, you come too late."
+
+And with many words and sorrowful-phrased excuse
+  Argued their German right
+To kill, most legally; hard though the duty be,
+  The law must assert its might.
+
+Only a woman! yet she had pity on them,
+  The victim offered slain
+To the gods of fear that they worship. Leave them there,
+  Red hands, to clutch their gain!
+
+She bewailed not herself, and we will bewail her not,
+  But with tears of pride rejoice
+That an English soul was found so crystal-clear
+  To be triumphant voice
+
+Of the human heart that dares adventure all
+  But live to itself untrue,
+And beyond all laws sees love as the light in the night,
+  As the star it must answer to.
+
+The hurts she healed, the thousands comforted--these
+  Make a fragrance of her fame.
+But because she stept to her star right on through death
+  It is Victory speaks her name.
+
+_Laurence Binyon_
+
+
+
+
+THE HELL-GATE OF SOISSONS
+
+
+My name is Darino, the poet. You have heard? _Oui, Comédie Française_.
+Perchance it has happened, _mon ami_, you know of my unworthy lays.
+Ah, then you must guess how my fingers are itching to talk to a pen;
+For I was at Soissons, and saw it, the death of the twelve Englishmen.
+
+My leg, _malheureusement_, I left it behind on the banks of the Aisne.
+Regret? I would pay with the other to witness their valor again.
+A trifle, indeed, I assure you, to give for the honor to tell
+How that handful of British, undaunted, went into the Gateway of Hell.
+
+Let me draw you a plan of the battle. Here we French and your Engineers
+  stood;
+Over there a detachment of German sharpshooters lay hid in a wood.
+A _mitrailleuse_ battery planted on top of this well-chosen ridge
+Held the road for the Prussians and covered the direct approach to the
+bridge.
+
+It was madness to dare the dense murder that spewed from those ghastly
+  machines.
+(Only those who have danced to its music can know what the
+_mitrailleuse_ means.)
+But the bridge on the Aisne was a menace; our safety demanded its fall:
+"Engineers,--volunteers!" In a body, the Royals stood out at the call.
+
+Death at best was the fate of that mission--to their glory not one was
+  dismayed.
+A party was chosen--and seven survived till the powder was laid.
+And _they_ died with their fuses unlighted. Another detachment! Again
+A sortie is made--all too vainly. The bridge still commanded the Aisne.
+
+We were fighting two foes--Time and Prussia--the moments were worth more
+  than troops.
+We _must_ blow up the bridge. A lone soldier darts out from the Royals
+  and swoops
+For the fuse! Fate seems with us. We cheer him; he answers--our hopes
+  are reborn!
+A ball rips his visor--his khaki shows red where another has torn.
+
+Will he live--will he last--will he make it? _Hélas!_ And so near to the
+  goal!
+A second, he dies! then a third one! A fourth! Still the Germans take
+  toll!
+A fifth, _magnifique_! It is magic! How does he escape them? He may....
+Yes, he _does_! See, the match flares! A rifle rings out from the wood
+  and says "Nay!"
+
+Six, seven, eight, nine take their places, six, seven, eight, nine brave
+  their hail;
+Six, seven, eight, nine--how we count them! But the sixth, seventh,
+  eighth, and ninth fail!
+A tenth! _Sacré nom!_ But these English are soldiers--they know how to
+  try;
+(He fumbles the place where his jaw was)--they show, too, how heroes can
+  die.
+
+Ten we count--ten who ventured unquailing--ten there were--and ten are
+  no more!
+Yet another salutes and superbly essays where the ten failed before.
+God of Battles, look down and protect him! Lord, his heart is as Thine--
+  let him live!
+But the _mitrailleuse_ splutters and stutters, and riddles him into a
+  sieve.
+
+Then I thought of my sins, and sat waiting the charge that we could not
+  withstand.
+And I thought of my beautiful Paris, and gave a last look at the land,
+At France, my _belle France_, in her glory of blue sky and green field
+  and wood.
+Death with honor, but never surrender. And to die with such men--it was
+  good.
+
+They are forming--the bugles are blaring--they will cross in a moment
+  and then....
+When out of the line of the Royals (your island, _mon ami_, breeds men)
+Burst a private, a tawny-haired giant--it was hopeless, but, _ciel!_ how
+  he ran!
+_Bon Dieu_ please remember the pattern, and make many more on his plan!
+
+No cheers from our ranks, and the Germans, they halted in wonderment
+  too;
+See, he reaches the bridge; ah! he lights it! I am dreaming, it _cannot_
+  be true.
+Screams of rage! _Fusillade!_ They have killed him! Too late though, the
+  good work is done.
+By the valor of twelve English martyrs, the Hell-Gate of Soissons is
+  won!
+
+_Herbert Kaufman_
+
+
+
+
+THE VIRGIN OF ALBERT
+
+(NOTRE DAME DE BREBIÈRES)
+
+
+Shyly expectant, gazing up at Her,
+  They linger, Gaul and Briton, side by side:
+  Death they know well, for daily have they died,
+Spending their boyhood ever bravelier;
+They wait: here is no priest or chorister,
+  Birds skirt the stricken tower, terrified;
+  Desolate, empty, is the Eastertide,
+Yet still they wait, watching the Babe and Her.
+
+Broken, the Mother stoops: the brutish foe
+  Hurled with dull hate his bolts, and down She swayed,
+Down, till She saw the toiling swarms below,--
+  Platoons, guns, transports, endlessly arrayed:
+"Women are woe for them! let Me be theirs,
+And comfort them, and hearken all their prayers!"
+
+_George Herbert Clarke_
+
+
+
+
+RETREAT
+
+
+Broken, bewildered by the long retreat
+  Across the stifling leagues of southern plain,
+  Across the scorching leagues of trampled grain,
+Half-stunned, half-blinded, by the trudge of feet
+And dusty smother of the August heat,
+  He dreamt of flowers in an English lane,
+  Of hedgerow flowers glistening after rain--
+All-heal and willow-herb and meadow-sweet.
+
+All-heal and willow-herb and meadow-sweet--
+  The innocent names kept up a cool refrain--
+All-heal and willow-herb and meadow-sweet,
+  Chiming and tinkling in his aching brain,
+  Until he babbled like a child again--
+"All-heal and willow-herb and meadow-sweet."
+
+_Wilfrid Wilson Gibson_
+
+
+
+
+A LETTER FROM THE FRONT
+
+
+I was out early to-day, spying about
+From the top of a haystack--such a lovely morning--
+And when I mounted again to canter back
+I saw across a field in the broad sunlight
+A young Gunner Subaltern, stalking along
+With a rook-rifle held at the ready, and--would you believe it?--
+A domestic cat, soberly marching beside him.
+
+So I laughed, and felt quite well disposed to the youngster,
+And shouted out "the top of the morning" to him,
+And wished him "Good sport!"--and then I remembered
+My rank, and his, and what I ought to be doing:
+And I rode nearer, and added, "I can only suppose
+You have not seen the Commander-in-Chief's order
+Forbidding English officers to annoy their Allies
+By hunting and shooting."
+        But he stood and saluted
+And said earnestly, "I beg your pardon, Sir,
+I was only going out to shoot a sparrow
+To feed my cat with."
+        So there was the whole picture,
+The lovely early morning, the occasional shell
+Screeching and scattering past us, the empty landscape,--
+Empty, except for the young Gunner saluting,
+And the cat, anxiously watching his every movement.
+
+I may be wrong, and I may have told it badly,
+But it struck _me_ as being extremely ludicrous.
+
+_Henry Newbolt_
+
+
+
+
+RHEIMS CATHEDRAL--1914
+
+
+A wingèd death has smitten dumb thy bells,
+  And poured them molten from thy tragic towers:
+  Now are the windows dust that were thy flower
+Patterned like frost, petalled like asphodels.
+Gone are the angels and the archangels,
+  The saints, the little lamb above thy door,
+  The shepherd Christ! They are not, any more,
+Save in the soul where exiled beauty dwells.
+
+But who has heard within thy vaulted gloom
+  That old divine insistence of the sea,
+    When music flows along the sculptured stone
+In tides of prayer, for him thy windows bloom
+  Like faithful sunset, warm immortally!
+    Thy bells live on, and Heaven is in their tone!
+
+_Grace Hazard Conkling_
+
+
+
+
+I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH....
+
+
+  I have a rendezvous with Death
+At some disputed barricade,
+When Spring comes back with rustling shade
+And apple-blossoms fill the air--
+I have a rendezvous with Death
+When Spring brings back blue days and fair.
+
+  It may be he shall take my hand
+And lead me into his dark land
+And close my eyes and quench my breath--
+It may be I shall pass him still.
+I have a rendezvous with Death
+On some scarred slope of battered hill,
+When Spring comes round again this year
+And the first meadow-flowers appear.
+
+  God knows 't were better to be deep
+Pillowed in silk and scented down,
+Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep
+Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
+Where hushed awakenings are dear....
+But I've a rendezvous with Death
+At midnight in some flaming town,
+When Spring trips north again this year,
+And I to my pledged word am true,
+I shall not fail that rendezvous.
+
+_Alan Seeger_
+
+
+
+
+THE SOLDIER
+
+
+If I should die, think only this of me:
+  That there's some corner of a foreign field
+That is for ever England. There shall be
+  In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
+A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
+  Gave once her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
+A body of England's, breathing English air,
+  Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
+
+And think this heart, all evil shed away,
+  A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
+    Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
+Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
+  And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
+    In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
+
+_Rupert Brooke_
+
+
+
+
+EXPECTANS EXPECTAVI
+
+
+From morn to midnight, all day through,
+I laugh and play as others do,
+I sin and chatter, just the same
+As others with a different name.
+
+And all year long upon the stage,
+I dance and tumble and do rage
+So vehemently, I scarcely see
+The inner and eternal me.
+
+I have a temple I do not
+Visit, a heart I have forgot,
+A self that I have never met,
+A secret shrine--and yet, and yet
+
+This sanctuary of my soul
+Unwitting I keep white and whole,
+Unlatched and lit, if Thou should'st care
+To enter or to tarry there.
+
+With parted lips and outstretched hands
+And listening ears Thy servant stands,
+Call Thou early, call Thou late,
+To Thy great service dedicate.
+
+_Charles Hamilton Sorley_
+
+_May, 1915_
+
+
+
+
+THE VOLUNTEER
+
+
+Here lies a clerk who half his life had spent
+Toiling at ledgers in a city grey,
+Thinking that so his days would drift away
+With no lance broken in life's tournament:
+Yet ever 'twixt the books and his bright eyes
+The gleaming eagles of the legions came,
+And horsemen, charging under phantom skies,
+Went thundering past beneath the oriflamme.
+
+And now those waiting dreams are satisfied;
+From twilight to the halls of dawn he went;
+His lance is broken; but he lies content
+With that high hour, in which he lived and died.
+And falling thus he wants no recompense,
+Who found his battle in the last resort;
+Nor needs he any hearse to bear him hence,
+Who goes to join the men of Agincourt.
+
+_Herbert Asquith_
+
+
+
+
+INTO BATTLE
+
+
+The naked earth is warm with Spring,
+  And with green grass and bursting trees
+Leans to the sun's gaze glorying,
+  And quivers in the sunny breeze;
+And Life is Colour and Warmth and Light,
+  And a striving evermore for these;
+And he is dead who will not fight;
+  And who dies fighting has increase.
+
+The fighting man shall from the sun
+  Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth;
+Speed with the light-foot winds to run,
+  And with the trees to newer birth;
+And find, when fighting shall be done,
+  Great rest, and fullness after dearth.
+
+All the bright company of Heaven
+  Hold him in their high comradeship,
+The Dog-Star, and the Sisters Seven,
+  Orion's Belt and sworded hip.
+
+The woodland trees that stand together,
+  They stand to him each one a friend;
+They gently speak in the windy weather;
+  They guide to valley and ridges' end.
+
+The kestrel hovering by day,
+  And the little owls that call by night,
+Bid him be swift and keen as they,
+  As keen of ear, as swift of sight.
+
+The blackbird sings to him, "Brother, brother,
+  If this be the last song you shall sing,
+Sing well, for you may not sing another;
+  Brother, sing."
+
+In dreary, doubtful, waiting hours,
+  Before the brazen frenzy starts,
+The horses show him nobler powers;
+  O patient eyes, courageous hearts!
+
+And when the burning moment breaks,
+  And all things else are out of mind,
+And only Joy-of-Battle takes
+  Him by the throat, and makes him blind,
+
+Through joy and blindness he shall know,
+  Not caring much to know, that still
+Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so
+  That it be not the Destined Will.
+
+The thundering line of battle stands,
+  And in the air Death moans and sings;
+But Day shall clasp him with strong hands,
+  And Night shall fold him in soft wings.
+
+_Julian Grenfell_
+
+_Flanders, April, 1915_
+
+
+
+
+THE CRICKETERS OF FLANDERS
+
+
+The first to climb the parapet
+With "cricket balls" in either hand;
+The first to vanish in the smoke
+Of God-forsaken No Man's Land;
+First at the wire and soonest through,
+First at those red-mouthed hounds of hell,
+The Maxims, and the first to fall,--
+They do their bit and do it well.
+
+Full sixty yards I've seen them throw
+With all that nicety of aim
+They learned on British cricket-fields.
+Ah, bombing is a Briton's game!
+Shell-hole to shell-hole, trench, to trench,
+"Lobbing them over" with an eye
+As true as though it _were_ a game
+And friends were having tea close by.
+
+Pull down some art-offending thing
+Of carven stone, and in its stead
+Let splendid bronze commemorate
+These men, the living and the dead.
+No figure of heroic size,
+Towering skyward like a god;
+But just a lad who might have stepped
+From any British bombing squad.
+
+His shrapnel helmet set atilt,
+His bombing waistcoat sagging low,
+His rifle slung across his back:
+Poised in the very act to throw.
+And let some graven legend tell
+Of those weird battles in the West
+Wherein he put old skill to use,
+And played old games with sterner zest.
+
+Thus should he stand, reminding those
+In less-believing days, perchance,
+How Britain's fighting cricketers
+Helped bomb the Germans out of France.
+And other eyes than ours would see;
+And other hearts than ours would thrill;
+And others say, as we have said:
+"A sportsman and a soldier still!"
+
+_James Norman Hall_
+
+
+
+
+"ALL THE HILLS AND VALES ALONG"
+
+
+All the hills and vales along
+Earth is bursting into song,
+And the singers are the chaps
+Who are going to die perhaps.
+  O sing, marching men,
+  Till the valleys ring again.
+  Give your gladness to earth's keeping,
+  So be glad, when you are sleeping.
+
+Cast away regret and rue,
+Think what you are marching to.
+Little live, great pass.
+Jesus Christ and Barabbas
+Were found the same day.
+This died, that went his way.
+  So sing with joyful breath.
+  For why, you are going to death.
+  Teeming earth will surely store
+  All the gladness that you pour.
+
+Earth that never doubts nor fears,
+Earth that knows of death, not tears,
+Earth that bore with joyful ease
+Hemlock for Socrates,
+Earth that blossomed and was glad
+'Neath the cross that Christ had,
+Shall rejoice and blossom too
+When the bullet reaches you.
+  Wherefore, men marching
+  On the road to death, sing!
+  Pour your gladness on earth's head,
+  So be merry, so be dead.
+
+From the hills and valleys earth.
+Shouts back the sound of mirth,
+Tramp of feet and lilt of song
+Ringing all the road along.
+All the music of their going,
+Ringing, swinging, glad song-throwing,
+Earth will echo still, when foot
+Lies numb and voice mute.
+  On, marching men, on
+  To the gates of death with song.
+  Sow your gladness for earth's reaping,
+  So you may be glad, though sleeping.
+  Strew your gladness on earth's bed,
+  So be merry, so be dead.
+
+_Charles Hamilton Sorley_
+
+
+
+
+NO MAN'S LAND
+
+
+No Man's Land is an eerie sight
+At early dawn in the pale gray light.
+Never a house and never a hedge
+In No Man's Land from edge to edge,
+And never a living soul walks there
+To taste the fresh of the morning air;--
+Only some lumps of rotting clay,
+That were friends or foemen yesterday.
+
+What are the bounds of No Man's Land?
+You can see them clearly on either hand,
+A mound of rag-bags gray in the sun,
+Or a furrow of brown where the earthworks run
+From the eastern hills to the western sea,
+Through field or forest o'er river and lea;
+No man may pass them, but aim you well
+And Death rides across on the bullet or shell.
+
+But No Man's Land is a goblin sight
+When patrols crawl over at dead o' night;
+_Boche_ or British, Belgian or French,
+You dice with death when you cross the trench.
+When the "rapid," like fireflies in the dark,
+Flits down the parapet spark by spark,
+And you drop for cover to keep your head
+With your face on the breast of the four months'
+dead.
+
+The man who ranges in No Man's Land
+Is dogged by the shadows on either hand
+When the star-shell's flare, as it bursts o'erhead,
+Scares the gray rats that feed on the dead,
+And the bursting bomb or the bayonet-snatch
+May answer the click of your safety-catch,
+For the lone patrol, with his life in his hand,
+Is hunting for blood in No Man's Land.
+
+_James H. Knight-Adkin_
+
+
+
+
+CHAMPAGNE, 1914-15
+
+
+In the glad revels, in the happy fêtes,
+  When cheeks are flushed, and glasses gilt and pearled
+With the sweet wine of France that concentrates
+  The sunshine and the beauty of the world,
+
+Drink sometimes, you whose footsteps yet may tread
+  The undisturbed, delightful paths of Earth,
+To those whose blood, in pious duty shed,
+  Hallows the soil where that same wine had birth.
+
+Here, by devoted comrades laid away,
+  Along our lines they slumber where they fell,
+Beside the crater at the Ferme d'Alger
+  And up the bloody slopes of La Pompelle,
+
+And round the city whose cathedral towers
+  The enemies of Beauty dared profane,
+And in the mat of multicolored flowers
+  That clothe the sunny chalk-fields of Champagne,
+
+Under the little crosses where they rise
+  The soldier rests. Now round him undismayed
+The cannon thunders, and at night he lies
+  At peace beneath the eternal fusillade....
+
+That other generations might possess--
+  From shame and menace free in years to come--
+A richer heritage of happiness,
+  He marched to that heroic martyrdom.
+
+Esteeming less the forfeit that he paid
+  Than undishonored that his flag might float
+Over the towers of liberty, he made
+  His breast the bulwark and his blood the moat.
+
+Obscurely sacrificed, his nameless tomb,
+  Bare of the sculptor's art, the poet's lines,
+Summer shall flush with poppy-fields in bloom,
+  And Autumn yellow with maturing vines.
+
+There the grape-pickers at their harvesting
+  Shall lightly tread and load their wicker trays,
+Blessing his memory as they toil and sing
+  In the slant sunshine of October days....
+
+I love to think that if my blood should be
+  So privileged to sink where his has sunk,
+I shall not pass from Earth entirely,
+  But when the banquet rings, when healths are drunk,
+
+And faces that the joys of living fill
+  Glow radiant with laughter and good cheer,
+In beaming cups some spark of me shall still
+  Brim toward the lips that once I held so dear.
+
+So shall one coveting no higher plane
+  Than nature clothes in color and flesh and tone,
+Even from the grave put upward to attain
+  The dreams youth cherished and missed and might have known;
+
+And that strong need that strove unsatisfied
+  Toward earthly beauty in all forms it wore,
+Not death itself shall utterly divide
+  From the beloved shapes it thirsted for.
+
+Alas, how many an adept for whose arms
+  Life held delicious offerings perished here,
+How many in the prime of all that charms,
+  Crowned with all gifts that conquer and endear!
+
+Honor them not so much with tears and flowers,
+  But you with whom the sweet fulfilment lies,
+Where in the anguish of atrocious hours
+  Turned their last thoughts and closed their dying eyes,
+
+Rather when music on bright gatherings lays
+  Its tender spell, and joy is uppermost,
+Be mindful of the men they were, and raise
+  Your glasses to them in one silent toast.
+
+Drink to them--amorous of dear Earth as well,
+  They asked no tribute lovelier than this--
+And in the wine that ripened where they fell,
+  Oh, frame your lips as though it were a kiss.
+
+_Alan Seeger_
+
+_Champagne, France_,
+
+_July, 1915_
+
+
+
+
+HEADQUARTERS
+
+
+A league and a league from the trenches--from the traversed
+  maze of the lines,
+Where daylong the sniper watches and daylong the bullet whines,
+And the cratered earth is in travail with mines and with
+  countermines--
+Here, where haply some woman dreamed (are those
+  her roses that bloom
+In the garden beyond the windows of my littered
+  working room?)
+We have decked the map for our masters as a bride is
+  decked for the groom.
+
+Fair, on each lettered numbered square--crossroad
+  and mound and wire,
+Loophole, redoubt, and emplacement--lie the targets
+  their mouths desire;
+Gay with purples and browns and blues, have we
+  traced them their arcs of fire.
+
+And ever the type-keys chatter; and ever our keen
+  wires bring
+Word from the watchers a-crouch below, word from
+  the watchers a-wing:
+And ever we hear the distant growl of our hid 'guns
+  thundering.
+
+Hear it hardly, and turn again to our maps, where the
+  trench lines crawl,
+Red on the gray and each with a sign for the ranging
+  shrapnel's fall--
+Snakes that our masters shall scotch at dawn, as is
+  written here on the wall.
+
+For the weeks of our waiting draw to a close....
+  There is scarcely a leaf astir
+In the garden beyond my windows, where the twilight
+  shadows blur
+The blaze of some woman's roses.... "Bombardment
+  orders, sir."
+
+_Gilbert Frankau_
+
+
+
+
+HOME THOUGHTS FROM LAVENTIE
+
+
+Green gardens in Laventie!
+Soldiers only know the street
+Where the mud is churned and splashed about
+    By battle-wending feet;
+And yet beside one stricken house there is a glimpse of grass--
+    Look for it when you pass.
+
+Beyond the church whose pitted spire
+Seems balanced on a strand
+Of swaying stone and tottering brick,
+    Two roofless ruins stand;
+And here, among the wreckage, where the back-wall should have been,
+    We found a garden green.
+
+The grass was never trodden on,
+The little path of gravel
+Was overgrown with celandine;
+    No other folk did travel
+Along its weedy surface but the nimble-footed mouse,
+    Running from house to house.
+
+So all along the tender blades
+Of soft and vivid grass
+We lay, nor heard the limber wheels
+    That pass and ever pass
+In noisy continuity until their stony rattle
+    Seems in itself a battle.
+
+At length we rose up from this ease
+Of tranquil happy mind,
+And searched the garden's little length
+    Some new pleasaunce to find;
+And there some yellow daffodils, and jasmine hanging high,
+    Did rest the tired eye.
+
+The fairest and most fragrant
+Of the many sweets we found
+Was a little bush of Daphne flower
+    Upon a mossy mound,
+And so thick were the blossoms set and so divine the scent,
+    That we were well content.
+
+Hungry for Spring I bent my head,
+The perfume fanned my face,
+And all my soul was dancing
+    In that lovely little place,
+Dancing with a measured step from wrecked and shattered towns
+    Away ... upon the Downs.
+
+I saw green banks of daffodil,
+Slim poplars in the breeze,
+Great tan-brown hares in gusty March
+    A-courting on the leas.
+And meadows, with their glittering streams--and  silver-scurrying dace--
+    Home, what a perfect place!
+
+_E. Wyndham Tennant_
+
+
+
+
+A PETITION
+
+
+All that a man might ask thou hast given me, England,
+  Birthright and happy childhood's long heart's-ease,
+And love whose range is deep beyond all sounding
+  And wider than all seas:
+A heart to front the world and find God in it.
+  Eyes blind enow but not too blind to see
+The lovely things behind the dross and darkness,
+  And lovelier things to be;
+And friends whose loyalty time nor death shall weaken
+  And quenchless hope and laughter's golden store--
+All that a man might ask thou hast given me, England,
+  Yet grant thou one thing more:
+That now when envious foes would spoil thy splendour,
+  Unversed in arms, a dreamer such, as I,
+May in thy ranks be deemed not all unworthy,
+  England, for thee to die.
+
+_Robert Ernest Vernède_
+
+
+
+
+FULFILMENT
+
+
+Was there love once? I have forgotten her.
+Was there grief once? Grief yet is mine.
+Other loves I have, men rough, but men who stir
+More grief, more joy, than love of thee and thine.
+
+Faces cheerful, full of whimsical mirth,
+Lined by the wind, burned by the sun;
+Bodies enraptured by the abounding earth,
+As whose children we are brethren: one.
+
+And any moment may descend hot death
+To shatter limbs! Pulp, tear, blast
+Belovèd soldiers who love rough life and breath
+Not less for dying faithful to the last.
+
+O the fading eyes, the grimed face turned bony,
+Oped mouth gushing, fallen head,
+Lessening pressure of a hand, shrunk, clammed and stony!
+O sudden spasm, release of the dead!
+
+Was there love once? I have forgotten her.
+Was there grief once? Grief yet is mine.
+O loved, living, dying, heroic soldier,
+All, all my joy, my grief, my love, are thine.
+
+_Robert Nichols_
+
+
+
+
+THE DAY'S MARCH
+
+
+The battery grides and jingles,
+Mile succeeds to mile;
+Shaking the noonday sunshine
+The guns lunge out awhile,
+And then are still awhile.
+
+We amble along the highway;
+The reeking, powdery dust
+Ascends and cakes our faces
+With a striped, sweaty crust.
+
+Under the still sky's violet
+The heat throbs on the air....
+The white road's dusty radiance
+Assumes a dark glare.
+
+With a head hot and heavy,
+And eyes that cannot rest,
+And a black heart burning
+In a stifled breast,
+
+I sit in the saddle,
+I feel the road unroll,
+And keep my senses straightened
+Toward to-morrow's goal.
+
+There, over unknown meadows
+Which we must reach at last,
+Day and night thunders
+A black and chilly blast.
+
+Heads forget heaviness,
+Hearts forget spleen,
+For by that mighty winnowing
+Being is blown clean.
+
+Light in the eyes again,
+Strength in the hand,
+A spirit dares, dies, forgives,
+And can understand!
+
+And, best! Love comes back again
+After grief and shame,
+And along the wind of death
+Throws a clean flame.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The battery grides and jingles,
+Mile succeeds to mile;
+Suddenly battering the silence
+The guns burst out awhile....
+
+I lift my head and smile.
+
+_Robert Nichols_
+
+
+
+
+THE SIGN
+
+
+We are here in a wood of little beeches:
+And the leaves are like black lace
+Against a sky of nacre.
+
+One bough of clear promise
+Across the moon.
+
+It is in this wise that God speaketh unto me.
+He layeth hands of healing upon my flesh,
+Stilling it in an eternal peace,
+Until my soul reaches out myriad and infinite hands
+Toward him,
+And is eased of its hunger.
+
+And I know that this passes:
+This implacable fury and torment of men,
+As a thing insensate and vain:
+And the stillness hath said unto me,
+Over the tumult of sounds and shaken flame,
+Out of the terrible beauty of wrath,
+_I alone am eternal._
+
+One bough of clear promise
+Across the moon.
+
+_Frederic Manning_
+
+
+
+
+THE TRENCHES
+
+
+Endless lanes sunken in the clay,
+Bays, and traverses, fringed with wasted herbage,
+Seed-pods of blue scabious, and some lingering blooms;
+And the sky, seen as from a well,
+Brilliant with frosty stars.
+We stumble, cursing, on the slippery duck-boards.
+Goaded like the damned by some invisible wrath,
+A will stronger than weariness, stronger than animal fear,
+Implacable and monotonous.
+
+Here a shaft, slanting, and below
+A dusty and flickering light from one feeble candle
+And prone figures sleeping uneasily,
+Murmuring,
+And men who cannot sleep,
+With faces impassive as masks,
+Bright, feverish eyes, and drawn lips,
+Sad, pitiless, terrible faces,
+Each an incarnate curse.
+
+Here in a bay, a helmeted sentry
+Silent and motionless, watching while two sleep,
+And he sees before him
+With indifferent eyes the blasted and torn land
+Peopled with stiff prone forms, stupidly rigid,
+As tho' they had not been men.
+
+Dead are the lips where love laughed or sang,
+The hands of youth eager to lay hold of life,
+Eyes that have laughed to eyes,
+And these were begotten,
+O Love, and lived lightly, and burnt
+With the lust of a man's first strength: ere they were rent.
+Almost at unawares, savagely; and strewn
+In bloody fragments, to be the carrion
+Of rats and crows.
+
+And the sentry moves not, searching
+Night for menace with weary eyes.
+
+_Frederic Manning_
+
+
+
+
+SONNETS
+
+
+I
+
+I see across the chasm of flying years
+  The pyre of Dido on the vacant shore;
+  I see Medea's fury and hear the roar
+Of rushing flames, the new bride's burning tears;
+And ever as still another vision peers
+  Thro' memory's mist to stir me more and more,
+  I say that surely I have lived before
+And known this joy and trembled with these fears.
+
+The passion that they show me burns so high;
+  Their love, in me who have not looked on love,
+  So fiercely flames; so wildly comes the cry
+Of stricken women the warrior's call above,
+That I would gladly lay me down and die
+  To wake again where Helen and Hector move.
+
+
+II
+
+The falling rain is music overhead,
+  The dark night, lit by no Intruding star,
+  Fit covering yields to thoughts that roam afar
+And turn again familiar paths to tread,
+Where many a laden hour too quickly sped
+  In happier times, before the dawn of war,
+  Before the spoiler had whet his sword to mar
+The faithful living and the mighty dead.
+
+It is not that my soul is weighed with woe,
+  But rather wonder, seeing they do but sleep.
+  As birds that in the sinking summer sweep
+Across the heaven to happier climes to go,
+  So they are gone; and sometimes we must weep,
+And sometimes, smiling, murmur, "Be it so!"
+
+_Henry William Hutchinson_
+
+
+
+
+THE MESSINES ROAD
+
+
+I
+
+The road that runs up to Messines
+  Is double-locked with gates of fire,
+Barred with high ramparts, and between
+  The unbridged river, and the wire.
+
+None ever goes up to Messines,
+  For Death lurks all about the town,
+Death holds the vale as his demesne,
+  And only Death moves up and down.
+
+
+II
+
+Choked with wild weeds, and overgrown
+  With rank grass, all torn and rent
+By war's opposing engines, strewn
+  With débris from each day's event!
+
+And in the dark the broken trees,
+  Whose arching boughs were once its shade,
+Grim and distorted, ghostly ease
+  In groans their souls vexed and afraid.
+
+Yet here the farmer drove his cart,
+  Here friendly folk would meet and pass,
+Here bore the good wife eggs to mart
+  And old and young walked up to Mass.
+
+Here schoolboys lingered in the way,
+  Here the bent packman laboured by,
+And lovers at the end o' the day
+  Whispered their secret blushingly.
+
+A goodly road for simple needs,
+  An avenue to praise and paint,
+Kept by fair use from wreck and weeds,
+  Blessed by the shrine of its own saint.
+
+
+III
+
+The road that runs up to Messines!
+  Ah, how we guard it day and night!
+And how they guard it, who o'erween
+  A stricken people, with their might!
+
+But we shall go up to Messines
+  Even thro' that fire-defended gate.
+Over and thro' all else between
+  And give the highway back its state.
+
+_J. E. Stewart_
+
+
+
+
+THE CHALLENGE OF THE GUNS
+
+
+By day, by night, along the lines their dull boom rings,
+And that reverberating roar its challenge flings.
+Not only unto thee across the narrow sea,
+But from the loneliest vale in the last land's heart
+The sad-eyed watching mother sees her sons depart.
+
+And freighted full the tumbling waters of ocean are
+With aid for England from England's sons afar.
+The glass is dim; we see not wisely, far, nor well,
+But bred of English bone, and reared on Freedom's wine,
+All that we have and are we lay on England's shrine.
+
+A. N. Field
+
+
+
+
+THE BEACH ROAD BY THE WOOD
+
+
+I know a beach road,
+  A road where I would go,
+It runs up northward
+  From Cooden Bay to Hoe;
+And there, in the High Woods,
+  Daffodils grow.
+
+And whoever walks along there
+  Stops short and sees,
+By the moist tree-roots
+  In a clearing of the trees,
+Yellow great battalions of them,
+  Blowing in the breeze.
+
+While the spring sun brightens,
+  And the dull sky clears,
+They blow their golden trumpets,
+  Those golden trumpeteers!
+They blow their golden trumpets
+  And they shake their glancing spears.
+
+And all the rocking beech-trees
+  Are bright with buds again,
+And the green and open spaces
+  Are greener after rain,
+And far to southward one can hear
+  The sullen, moaning rain.
+
+Once before I die
+  I will leave the town behind,
+The loud town, the dark town
+  That cramps and chills the mind,
+And I'll stand again bareheaded there
+  In the sunlight and the wind.
+
+Yes, I shall stand
+  Where as a boy I stood
+Above the dykes and levels
+  In the beach road by the wood,
+And I'll smell again the sea breeze,
+  Salt and harsh and good.
+
+And there shall rise to me
+  From that consecrated ground
+The old dreams, the lost dreams
+  That years and cares have drowned;
+Welling up within me
+  And above me and around
+The song that I could never sing
+  And the face I never found.
+
+_Geoffrey Howard_
+
+
+
+
+GERMAN PRISONERS
+
+
+When first I saw you in the curious street
+Like some platoon of soldier ghosts in grey,
+My mad impulse was all to smite and slay,
+To spit upon you--tread you 'neath my feet.
+But when I saw how each sad soul did greet
+My gaze with no sign of defiant frown,
+How from tired eyes looked spirits broken down,
+How each face showed the pale flag of defeat,
+And doubt, despair, and disillusionment,
+And how were grievous wounds on many a head.
+And on your garb red-faced was other red;
+And how you stooped as men whose strength was spent,
+I knew that we had suffered each as other,
+And could have grasped your hand and cried, "My brother!"
+
+_Joseph Lee_
+
+
+
+
+"--BUT A SHORT TIME TO LIVE"
+
+
+Our little hour,--how swift it flies
+  When poppies flare and lilies smile;
+How soon the fleeting minute dies,
+  Leaving us but a little while
+To dream our dream, to sing our song,
+  To pick the fruit, to pluck the flower,
+The Gods--They do not give us long,--
+  One little hour.
+
+Our little hour,--how short it is
+  When Love with dew-eyed loveliness
+Raises her lips for ours to kiss
+  And dies within our first caress.
+Youth flickers out like wind-blown flame,
+  Sweets of to-day to-morrow sour,
+For Time and Death, relentless, claim
+  Our little hour.
+
+Our little hour,--how short a tune
+  To wage our wars, to fan our hates,
+To take our fill of armoured crime,
+  To troop our banners, storm the gates.
+Blood on the sword, our eyes blood-red,
+  Blind in our puny reign of power,
+Do we forget how soon is sped
+  Our little hour?
+
+Our little hour,--how soon it dies:
+  How short a time to tell our beads,
+To chant our feeble Litanies,
+  To think sweet thoughts, to do good deeds.
+The altar lights grow pale and dim,
+  The bells hang silent in the tower--
+So passes with the dying hymn
+  Our little hour.
+
+_Leslie Coulson_
+
+
+
+
+BEFORE ACTION
+
+
+By all the glories of the day,
+And the cool evening's benison:
+By the last sunset touch that lay
+Upon the hills when day was done;
+By beauty lavishly outpoured,
+And blessings carelessly received,
+By all the days that I have lived,
+Make me a soldier, Lord.
+
+By all of all men's hopes and fears,
+And all the wonders poets sing,
+The laughter of unclouded years,
+And every sad and lovely thing:
+By the romantic ages stored
+With high endeavour that was his,
+By all his mad catastrophes,
+Make me a man, O Lord.
+
+I, that on my familiar hill
+Saw with uncomprehending eyes
+A hundred of Thy sunsets spill
+Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice,
+Ere the sun swings his noonday sword
+Must say good-bye to all of this:--
+By all delights that I shall miss,
+Help me to die, O Lord.
+
+_W. N. Hodgson ("Edward Melbourne")_
+
+
+
+
+COURAGE
+
+
+Alone amid the battle-din untouched
+  Stands out one figure beautiful, serene;
+No grime of smoke nor reeking blood hath smutched
+  The virgin brow of this unconquered queen.
+She is the Joy of Courage vanquishing
+  The unstilled tremors of the fearful heart;
+And it is she that bids the poet sing,
+  And gives to each the strength to bear his part.
+
+Her eye shall not be dimmed, but as a flame
+  Shall light the distant ages with its fire,
+That men may know the glory of her name,
+  That purified our souls of fear's desire.
+And she doth calm our sorrow, soothe our pain,
+  And she shall lead us back to peace again.
+
+_Dyneley Hussey_
+
+
+
+
+OPTIMISM
+
+
+At last there'll dawn the last of the long year,
+Of the long year that seemed to dream no end,
+Whose every dawn but turned the world more drear,
+And slew some hope, or led away some friend.
+Or be you dark, or buffeting, or blind,
+We care not, day, but leave not death behind.
+
+The hours that feed on war go heavy-hearted,
+Death is no fare wherewith to make hearts fain.
+Oh, we are sick to find that they who started
+With glamour in their eyes came not again.
+O day, be long and heavy if you will,
+But on our hopes set not a bitter heel.
+
+For tiny hopes like tiny flowers of Spring
+Will come, though death and ruin hold the land,
+Though storms may roar they may not break the wing
+Of the earthed lark whose song is ever bland.
+Fell year unpitiful, slow days of scorn,
+Your kind shall die, and sweeter days be born.
+
+_A. Victor Ratcliffe_
+
+
+
+
+THE BATTLEFIELD
+
+
+Around no fire the soldiers sleep to-night,
+  But lie a-wearied on the ice-bound field,
+  With cloaks wrapt round their sleeping forms, to shield
+Them from the northern winds. Ere comes the light
+Of morn brave men must arm, stern foes to fight.
+  The sentry stands, his limbs with cold congealed;
+  His head a-nod with sleep; he cannot yield,
+Though sleep and snow in deadly force unite.
+
+Amongst the sleepers lies the Boy awake,
+  And wide-eyed plans brave glories that transcend
+  The deeds of heroes dead; then dreams o'ertake
+His tired-out brain, and lofty fancies blend
+To one grand theme, and through all barriers break
+  To guard from hurt his faithful sleeping friend.
+
+_Sydney Oswald_
+
+
+
+
+"ON LES AURA!"
+
+
+SOLDAT JACQUES BONHOMME LOQUITUR:
+
+See you that stretch of shell-torn mud spotted with
+      pools of mire,
+Crossed by a burst abandoned trench and tortured
+      strands of wire,
+Where splintered pickets reel and sag and leprous
+      trench-rats play,
+That scour the Devil's hunting-ground to seek their
+      carrion prey?
+That is the field my father loved, the field that once
+      was mine,
+The land I nursed for my child's child as my fathers
+      did long syne.
+
+See there a mound of powdered stones, all flattened,
+      smashed, and torn,
+Gone black with damp and green with slime?--Ere
+      you and I were born
+My father's father built a house, a little house and
+      bare,
+And there I brought my woman home--that heap of
+      rubble there!
+The soil of France! Fat fields and green that bred my
+      blood and bone!
+Each wound that scars my bosom's pride burns deeper
+      than my own.
+
+But yet there is one thing to say--one thing that
+      pays for all,
+Whatever lot our bodies know, whatever fate befall,
+We hold the line! We hold it still! My fields are No
+      Man's Land,
+But the good God is debonair and holds us by the
+      hand.
+"_On les aura!_" See there! and there I soaked heaps
+      of huddled, grey!
+My fields shall laugh--enriched by those who sought
+      them for a prey.
+
+_James H. Knight-Adkin_
+
+
+
+
+TO AN OLD LADY SEEN AT A GUESTHOUSE
+FOR SOLDIERS
+
+
+Quiet thou didst stand at thine appointed place,
+There was no press to purchase--younger grace
+Attracts the youth of valour. Thou didst not know,
+Like the old, kindly Martha, to and fro
+To haste. Yet one could say, "In thine I prize
+The strength of calm that held in Mary's eyes."
+And when they came, thy gracious smile so wrought
+They knew that they were given, not that they bought.
+Thou didst not tempt to vauntings, and pretence
+Was dumb before thy perfect woman's sense.
+Blest who have seen, for they shall ever see
+The radiance of thy benignity.
+
+_Alexander Robertson_
+
+
+
+
+THE CASUALTY CLEARING STATION
+
+
+A bowl of daffodils,
+A crimson-quilted bed,
+Sheets and pillows white as snow--
+White and gold and red--
+And sisters moving to and fro,
+With soft and silent tread.
+
+So all my spirit fills
+With pleasure infinite,
+And all the feathered wings of rest
+Seem flocking from the radiant West
+To bear me thro' the night.
+
+See, how they close me in.
+They, and the sisters' arms.
+One eye is closed, the other lid
+Is watching how my spirit slid
+Toward some red-roofed farms,
+And having crept beneath them slept
+Secure from war's alarms.
+
+_Gilbert Waterhouse_
+
+
+
+
+HILLS OF HOME
+
+
+Oh! yon hills are filled with sunlight, and the green
+      leaves paled to gold,
+And the smoking mists of Autumn hanging faintly
+      o'er the wold;
+I dream of hills of other days whose sides I loved to
+      roam
+When Spring was dancing through the lanes of those
+      distant hills of home.
+
+The winds of heaven gathered there as pure and cold
+      as dew;
+Wood-sorrel and wild violets along the hedgerows
+      grew,
+The blossom on the pear-trees was as white as flakes
+      of foam
+In the orchard 'neath the shadow of those distant
+      hills of home.
+
+The first white frost in the meadow will be shining
+      there to-day
+And the furrowed upland glinting warm beside the
+      woodland way;
+There, a bright face and a clear hearth will be waiting
+      when I come,
+And my heart is throbbing wildly for those distant
+      hills of home.
+
+_Malcolm Hemphrey_
+
+
+
+
+THE RED CROSS SPIRIT SPEAKS
+
+
+Wherever war, with its red woes,
+Or flood, or fire, or famine goes,
+    There, too, go I;
+If earth in any quarter quakes
+Or pestilence its ravage makes,
+    Thither I fly.
+
+I kneel behind the soldier's trench,
+I walk 'mid shambles' smear and stench,
+    The dead I mourn;
+I bear the stretcher and I bend
+O'er Fritz and Pierre and Jack to mend
+    What shells have torn.
+
+I go wherever men may dare,
+I go wherever woman's care
+    And love can live,
+Wherever strength and skill can bring
+Surcease to human suffering,
+    Or solace give.
+
+I helped upon Haldora's shore;
+With Hospitaller Knights I bore
+    The first red cross;
+I was the Lady of the Lamp;
+I saw in Solferino's camp
+    The crimson loss.
+
+I am your pennies and your pounds;
+I am your bodies on their rounds
+    Of pain afar:
+I am _you_, doing what you would
+If you were only where you could--
+    Your avatar.
+
+The cross which on my arm I wear,
+The flag which o'er my breast I bear,
+  Is but the sign
+Of what you'd sacrifice for him
+Who suffers on the hellish rim
+    Of war's red line.
+
+_John Finley_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPLAIN TO THE FORCES
+
+
+["I have once more to remark upon the devotion to duty, courage, and
+contempt of danger which has characterized the work of the Chaplains of
+the Army throughout this campaign."--_Sir John French, in the Neuve
+Chapelle dispatch_.]
+
+Ambassador of Christ you go
+Up to the very gates of Hell,
+Through fog of powder, storm of shell,
+To speak your Master's message: "Lo,
+The Prince of Peace is with you still,
+His peace be with you, His good-will."
+
+It is not small, your priesthood's price.
+To be a man and yet stand by,
+To hold your life while others die,
+To bless, not share the sacrifice,
+To watch the strife and take no part--
+You with the fire at your heart.
+
+But yours, for our great Captain Christ,
+To know the sweat of agony,
+The darkness of Gethsemane,
+In anguish for these souls unpriced.
+Vicegerent of God's pity you,
+A sword must pierce your own soul through.
+
+In the pale gleam of new-born day,
+Apart in some tree-shadowed place,
+Your altar but a packing-case,
+Rude as the shed where Mary lay,
+Your sanctuary the rain-drenched sod,
+You bring the kneeling soldier God.
+
+As sentinel you guard the gate
+'Twixt life and death, and unto death
+Speed the brave soul whose failing breath
+Shudders not at the grip of Fate,
+But answers, gallant to the end,
+"Christ is the Word--and I his friend."
+
+Then God go with you, priest of God,
+For all is well and shall be well.
+What though you tread the roads of Hell,
+Your Captain these same ways has trod.
+Above the anguish and the loss
+Still floats the ensign of His Cross.
+
+_Winifred M. Letts_
+
+
+
+
+SONG OF THE RED CROSS
+
+
+O gracious ones, we bless your name
+  Upon our bended knee;
+The voice of love with tongue of flame
+  Records your charity.
+Your hearts, your lives right willingly ye gave,
+  That sacred ruth might shine;
+Ye fell, bright spirits, brave amongst the brave,
+  Compassionate, divine.
+
+Example from your lustrous deeds
+  The conqueror shall take,
+Sowing sublime and fruitful seeds
+  Of _aidos_ in this ache.
+And when our griefs have passed on gloomy wing,
+  When friend and foe are sped,
+Sons of a morning to be born shall sing
+  The radiant Cross of Red;
+Sons of a morning to be born shall sing
+  The radiant Cross of Red.
+
+_Eden Phillpotts_
+
+
+
+
+THE HEALERS
+
+
+In a vision of the night I saw them,
+  In the battles of the night.
+'Mid the roar and the reeling shadows of blood
+  They were moving like light,
+
+Light of the reason, guarded
+  Tense within the will,
+As a lantern under a tossing of boughs
+  Burns steady and still.
+
+With scrutiny calm, and with fingers
+  Patient as swift
+They bind up the hurts and the pain-writhen
+  Bodies uplift,
+
+Untired and defenceless; around them
+  With shrieks in its breath
+Bursts stark from the terrible horizon
+  Impersonal death;
+
+But they take not their courage from anger
+  That blinds the hot being;
+They take not their pity from weakness;
+  Tender, yet seeing;
+
+Feeling, yet nerved to the uttermost;
+  Keen, like steel;
+Yet the wounds of the mind they are stricken with,
+  Who shall heal?
+
+They endure to have eyes of the watcher
+  In hell, and not swerve
+For an hour from the faith that they follow,
+  The light that they serve.
+
+Man true to man, to his kindness
+  That overflows all,
+To his spirit erect in the thunder
+  When all his forts fall,--
+
+This light, in the tiger-mad welter,
+  They serve and they save.
+What song shall be worthy to sing of them--
+  Braver than the brave?
+
+_Laurence Binyon_
+
+
+
+
+THE RED CROSS NURSES
+
+
+Out where the line of battle cleaves
+The horizon of woe
+And sightless warriors clutch the leaves
+The Red Cross nurses go.
+In where the cots of agony
+Mark death's unmeasured tide--
+Bear up the battle's harvestry--
+The Red Cross nurses glide.
+
+Look! Where the hell of steel has torn
+Its way through slumbering earth
+The orphaned urchins kneel forlorn
+And wonder at their birth.
+Until, above them, calm and wise
+With smile and guiding hand,
+God looking through their gentle eyes,
+The Red Cross nurses stand.
+
+_Thomas L. Masson_
+
+
+
+
+KILMENY
+
+(A SONG OF THE TRAWLERS)
+
+
+Dark, dark lay the drifters, against the red west,
+  As they shot their long meshes of steel overside;
+And the oily green waters were rocking to rest
+  When _Kilmeny_ went out, at the turn of the tide.
+And nobody knew where that lassie would roam,
+  For the magic that called her was tapping unseen,
+It was well nigh a week ere _Kilmeny_ came home,
+  And nobody knew where _Kilmeny_ had been.
+
+She'd a gun at her bow that was Newcastle's best,
+  And a gun at her stern that was fresh from the Clyde,
+And a secret her skipper had never confessed,
+  Not even at dawn, to his newly wed bride;
+And a wireless that whispered above like a gnome,
+  The laughter of London, the boasts of Berlin.
+O, it may have been mermaids that lured her from home,
+  But nobody knew where _Kilmeny_ had been.
+
+It was dark when _Kilmeny_ came home from her quest,
+  With her bridge dabbled red where her skipper had died;
+But she moved like a bride with a rose at her breast;
+  And "Well done, Kilmeny!" the admiral cried.
+
+Now at sixty-four fathom a conger may come,
+  And nose at the bones of a drowned submarine;
+But late in the evening _Kilmeny_ came home,
+  And nobody knew where _Kilmeny_ had been.
+
+There's a wandering shadow that stares at the foam,
+  Though they sing all the night to old England, their queen,
+Late, late in the evening _Kilmeny_ came home,
+  And nobody knew where _Kilmeny_ had been.
+
+_Alfred Noyes_
+
+
+
+
+THE MINE-SWEEPERS
+
+
+Dawn off the Foreland--the young flood making
+  Jumbled and short and steep--
+Black in the hollows and bright where it's breaking--
+  Awkward water to sweep.
+  "Mines reported in the fairway,
+  Warn all traffic and detain.
+Sent up _Unity_, _Claribel_, _Assyrian_, _Stormcock_, and _Golden
+Gain_."
+
+Noon off the Foreland--the first ebb making
+  Lumpy and strong in the bight.
+Boom after boom, and the golf-hut shaking
+  And the jackdaws wild with fright.
+  "Mines located in the fairway,
+  Boats now working up the chain,
+Sweepers--_Unity_, _Claribel_, _Assyrian_, _Stormcock_, and _Golden
+Gain_."
+
+Dusk off the Foreland--the last light going
+  And the traffic crowding through,
+And five damned trawlers with their syreens blowing
+  Heading the whole review!
+  "Sweep completed in the fairway.
+  No more mines remain.
+Sent back _Unity_, _Claribel_, _Assyrian_, _Stormcock_, and _Golden
+Gain_."
+
+Rudyard Kipling_
+
+
+
+
+MARE LIBERUM
+
+
+You dare to say with perjured lips,
+  "We fight to make the ocean free"?
+_You_, whose black trail of butchered ships
+  Bestrews the bed of every sea
+  Where German submarines have wrought
+  Their horrors! Have you never thought,--
+What you call freedom, men call piracy!
+
+Unnumbered ghosts that haunt the wave
+  Where you have murdered, cry you down;
+And seamen whom you would not save,
+  Weave now in weed-grown depths a crown
+  Of shame for your imperious head,--
+  A dark memorial of the dead,--
+Women and children whom you left to drown.
+
+Nay, not till thieves are set to guard
+  The gold, and corsairs called to keep
+O'er peaceful commerce watch and ward,
+  And wolves to herd the helpless sheep,
+  Shall men and women look to thee--
+  Thou ruthless Old Man of the Sea--
+To safeguard law and freedom on the deep!
+
+In nobler breeds we put our trust:
+  The nations in whose sacred lore
+The "Ought" stands out above the "Must,"
+  And Honor rules in peace and war.
+  With these we hold in soul and heart,
+  With these we choose our lot and part,
+Till Liberty is safe on sea and shore.
+
+_Henry van Dyke_
+
+_February 11, 1917_
+
+
+
+
+THE DAWN PATROL
+
+
+Sometimes I fly at dawn above the sea,
+Where, underneath, the restless waters flow--
+  Silver, and cold, and slow,
+Dim in the east there burns a new-born sun,
+Whose rosy gleams along the ripples run,
+  Save where the mist droops low,
+Hiding the level loneliness from me.
+
+And now appears beneath the milk-white haze
+A little fleet of anchored ships, which lie
+  In clustered company,
+And seem as they are yet fast bound by sleep,
+Although the day has long begun to peep,
+  With red-inflamèd eye,
+Along the still, deserted ocean ways.
+
+The fresh, cold wind of dawn blows on my face
+As in the sun's raw heart I swiftly fly,
+  And watch the seas glide by.
+Scarce human seem I, moving through the skies,
+And far removed from warlike enterprise--
+  Like some great gull on high
+Whose white and gleaming wings beat on through space.
+
+Then do I feel with God quite, quite alone,
+High in the virgin morn, so white and still,
+  And free from human ill:
+My prayers transcend my feeble earth-bound plaints--
+As though I sang among the happy Saints
+  With many a holy thrill--
+As though the glowing sun were God's bright Throne.
+
+My flight is done. I cross the line of foam
+That breaks around a town of grey and red,
+  Whose streets and squares lie dead
+Beneath the silent dawn--then am I proud
+That England's peace to guard I am allowed;
+  Then bow my humble head,
+In thanks to Him Who brings me safely home.
+
+_Paul Bewsher_
+
+
+
+
+DESTROYERS OFF JUTLAND
+
+
+["If lost hounds could speak when they cast up next day after an
+unchecked night among the wild life of the dark they would talk much as
+our destroyers do."--_Rudyard Kipling_.]
+
+They had hot scent across the spumy sea,
+  _Gehenna_ and her sister, swift _Shaitan_,
+  That in the pack, with _Goblin_, _Eblis_ ran
+And many a couple more, full cry, foot-free;
+The dog-fox and his brood were fain to flee,
+  But bare of fang and dangerous to the van
+  That pressed them close. So when the kill began
+Some hounds were lamed and some died splendidly.
+
+But from the dusk along the Skagerack,
+  Until dawn loomed upon the Reef of Horn
+    And the last fox had slunk back to his earth,
+They kept the great traditions of the pack,
+  Staunch-hearted through the hunt, as they were born,
+    These hounds that England suckled at the birth.
+
+_Reginald McIntosh Cleveland_
+
+
+
+
+BRITISH MERCHANT SERVICE
+
+
+Oh, down by Millwall Basin as I went the other day,
+I met a skipper that I knew, and to him I did say:
+"Now what's the cargo, Captain, that brings you up this way?"
+
+"Oh, I've been up and down (said he) and round about also....
+From Sydney to the Skagerack, and Kiel to Callao....
+With a leaking steam-pipe all the way to Californ-i-o....
+
+"With pots and pans and ivory fans and every kind of thing,
+Rails and nails and cotton bales, and sewer pipes and string....
+But now I'm through with cargoes, and I'm here to serve the King!
+
+"And if it's sweeping mines (to which my fancy somewhat leans)
+Or hanging out with booby-traps for the skulking submarines,
+I'm here to do my blooming best and give the beggars beans!
+
+"A rough job and a tough job is the best job for me,
+And what or where I don't much care, I'll take what it may be,
+For a tight place is the right place when it's foul weather at sea!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There's not a port he doesn't know from Melbourne to New York;
+He's as hard as a lump of harness beef, and as salt as pickled pork....
+And he'll stand by a wreck in a murdering gale and count it part of his
+work!
+
+He's the terror of the fo'c's'le when he heals its various ills
+With turpentine and mustard leaves, and poultices and pills....
+But he knows the sea like the palm of his hand, as a shepherd knows the
+hills.
+
+He'll spin you yarns from dawn to dark--and half of 'em are true!
+He swears in a score of languages, and maybe talks in two!
+And ... he'll lower a boat in a hurricane to save a drowning crew.
+
+A rough job or a tough job--he's handled two or three--
+And what or where he won't much care, nor ask what the risk may be....
+For a tight place is the right place when it's wild weather at sea!
+
+_C. Fox Smith_
+
+
+
+
+TO A SOLDIER IN HOSPITAL
+
+
+Courage came to you with your boyhood's grace
+    Of ardent life and limb.
+Each day new dangers steeled you to the test,
+    To ride, to climb, to swim.
+Your hot blood taught you carelessness of death
+        With every breath.
+
+So when you went to play another game
+    You could not but be brave:
+An Empire's team, a rougher football field,
+    The end--perhaps your grave.
+What matter? On the winning of a goal
+        You staked your soul.
+
+Yes, you wore courage as you wore your youth
+    With carelessness and joy.
+But in what Spartan school of discipline
+    Did you get patience, boy?
+How did you learn to bear this long-drawn pain
+        And not complain?
+
+Restless with throbbing hopes, with thwarted aims,
+    Impulsive as a colt,
+How do you lie here month by weary month
+    Helpless, and not revolt?
+What joy can these monotonous days afford
+        Here in a ward?
+
+Yet you are merry as the birds in spring,
+    Or feign the gaiety,
+Lest those who dress and tend your wound each day
+    Should guess the agony.
+Lest they should suffer--this the only fear
+        You let draw near.
+
+Greybeard philosophy has sought in books
+    And argument this truth,
+That man is greater than his pain, but you
+    Have learnt it in your youth.
+You know the wisdom taught by Calvary
+        At twenty-three.
+
+Death would have found you brave, but braver still
+    You face each lagging day,
+A merry Stoic, patient, chivalrous,
+    Divinely kind and gay.
+You bear your knowledge lightly, graduate
+        Of unkind Fate.
+
+Careless philosopher, the first to laugh,
+    The latest to complain.
+Unmindful that you teach, you taught me this
+    In your long fight with pain:
+Since God made man so good--here stands my creed--
+        God's good indeed.
+
+_Winifred M. Letts_
+
+
+
+
+BETWEEN THE LINES
+
+
+When consciousness came back, he found he lay
+Between the opposing fires, but could not tell
+On which hand were his friends; and either way
+For him to turn was chancy--bullet and shell
+Whistling and shrieking over him, as the glare
+Of searchlights scoured the darkness to blind day.
+He scrambled to his hands and knees ascare,
+Dragging his wounded foot through puddled clay,
+And tumbled in a hole a shell had scooped
+At random in a turnip-field between
+The unseen trenches where the foes lay cooped
+Through that unending-battle of unseen,
+Dead-locked, league-stretching armies; and quite spent
+He rolled upon his back within the pit,
+And lay secure, thinking of all it meant--
+His lying in that little hole, sore hit,
+But living, while across the starry sky
+Shrapnel and shell went screeching overhead--
+Of all it meant that he, Tom Dodd, should lie
+Among the Belgian turnips, while his bed....
+If it were he, indeed, who'd climbed each night,
+Fagged with the day's work, up the narrow stair,
+And slipt his clothes off in the candle-light,
+Too tired to fold them neatly in a chair
+The way his mother'd taught him--too dog-tired
+After the long day's serving in the shop,
+Inquiring what each customer required,
+Politely talking weather, fit to drop....
+
+And now for fourteen days and nights, at least,
+He hadn't had his clothes off, and had lain
+In muddy trenches, napping like a beast
+With one eye open, under sun and rain
+And that unceasing hell-fire....
+                                  It was strange
+How things turned out--the chances! You'd just got
+To take your luck in life, you couldn't change
+Your luck.
+                And so here he was lying shot
+Who just six months ago had thought to spend
+His days behind a counter. Still, perhaps....
+And now, God only knew how he would end!
+
+He'd like to know how many of the chaps
+Had won back to the trench alive, when he
+Had fallen wounded and been left for dead,
+If any!...
+                This was different, certainly,
+From selling knots of tape and reels of thread
+And knots of tape and reels of thread and knots
+Of tape and reels of thread and knots of tape,
+Day in, day out, and answering "Have you got"'s
+And "Do you keep"'s till there seemed no escape
+From everlasting serving in a shop,
+Inquiring what each customer required,
+Politely talking weather, fit to drop,
+With swollen ankles, tired....
+                                But he was tired
+Now. Every bone was aching, and had ached
+For fourteen days and nights in that wet trench--
+Just duller when he slept than when he waked--
+Crouching for shelter from the steady drench
+Of shell and shrapnel....
+                        That old trench, it seemed
+Almost like home to him. He'd slept and fed
+And sung and smoked in it, while shrapnel screamed
+And shells went whining harmless overhead--
+Harmless, at least, as far as he....
+                                     But Dick--
+Dick hadn't found them harmless yesterday,
+At breakfast, when he'd said he couldn't stick
+Eating dry bread, and crawled out the back way,
+And brought them butter in a lordly dish--
+Butter enough for all, and held it high,
+Yellow and fresh and clean as you would wish--
+When plump upon the plate from out the sky
+A shell fell bursting.... Where the butter went,
+God only knew!...
+              And Dick.... He dared not think
+Of what had come to Dick.... or what it meant--
+The shrieking and the whistling and the stink
+He'd lived in fourteen days and nights. 'T was luck
+That he still lived.... And queer how little then
+He seemed to care that Dick.... perhaps 't was pluck
+That hardened him--a man among the men--
+Perhaps.... Yet, only think things out a bit,
+And he was rabbit-livered, blue with funk!
+And he'd liked Dick ... and yet when Dick was hit
+He hadn't turned a hair. The meanest skunk
+He should have thought would feel it when his mate
+Was blown to smithereens--Dick, proud as punch,
+Grinning like sin, and holding up the plate--
+But he had gone on munching his dry hunch,
+Unwinking, till he swallowed the last crumb.
+Perhaps 't was just because he dared not let
+His mind run upon Dick, who'd been his chum.
+He dared not now, though he could not forget.
+
+Dick took his luck. And, life or death, 't was luck
+From first to last; and you'd just got to trust
+Your luck and grin. It wasn't so much pluck
+As knowing that you'd got to, when needs must,
+And better to die grinning....
+                                  Quiet now
+Had fallen on the night. On either hand
+The guns were quiet. Cool upon his brow
+The quiet darkness brooded, as he scanned
+The starry sky. He'd never seen before
+So many stars. Although, of course, he'd known
+That there were stars, somehow before the war
+He'd never realised them--so thick-sown,
+Millions and millions. Serving in the shop,
+Stars didn't count for much; and then at nights
+Strolling the pavements, dull and fit to drop,
+You didn't see much but the city lights.
+He'd never in his life seen so much sky
+As he'd seen this last fortnight. It was queer
+The things war taught you. He'd a mind to try
+To count the stars--they shone so bright and clear.
+
+One, two, three, four.... Ah, God, but he was tired....
+Five, six, seven, eight....
+                            Yes, it was number eight.
+And what was the next thing that she required?
+(Too bad of customers to come so late,
+At closing time!) Again within the shop
+He handled knots of tape and reels of thread,
+Politely talking weather, fit to drop....
+
+When once again the whole sky overhead
+Flared blind with searchlights, and the shriek of shell
+And scream of shrapnel roused him. Drowsily
+He stared about him, wondering. Then he fell
+Into deep dreamless slumber.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                               He could see
+Two dark eyes peeping at him, ere he knew
+He was awake, and it again was day--
+An August morning, burning to clear blue.
+The frightened rabbit scuttled....
+                                    Far away,
+A sound of firing.... Up there, in the sky
+Big dragon-flies hung hovering.... Snowballs burst
+About them.... Flies and snowballs. With a cry
+He crouched to watch the airmen pass--the first
+That he'd seen under fire. Lord, that was pluck--
+Shells bursting all about them--and what nerve!
+They took their chance, and trusted to their luck.
+At such a dizzy height to dip and swerve,
+Dodging the shell-fire....
+                           Hell! but one was hit,
+And tumbling like a pigeon, plump....
+                                  Thank Heaven,
+It righted, and then turned; and after it
+The whole flock followed safe--four, five, six, seven,
+Yes, they were all there safe. He hoped they'd win
+Back to their lines in safety. They deserved,
+Even if they were Germans.... 'T was no sin
+To wish them luck. Think how that beggar swerved
+Just in the nick of time!
+                          He, too, must try
+To win back to the lines, though, likely as not,
+He'd take the wrong turn: but he couldn't lie
+Forever in that hungry hole and rot,
+He'd got to take his luck, to take his chance
+Of being sniped by foes or friends. He'd be
+With any luck in Germany or France
+Or Kingdom-come, next morning....
+                                  Drearily
+The blazing day burnt over him, shot and shell
+Whistling and whining ceaselessly. But light
+Faded at last, and as the darkness fell
+He rose, and crawled away into the night.
+
+_Wilfrid Wilson Gibson_
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE COMRADE
+
+(AFTER W.H. LEATHAM'S _The Comrade in White_)
+
+
+Under our curtain of fire,
+Over the clotted clods,
+We charged, to be withered, to reel
+And despairingly wheel
+When the bugles bade us retire
+From the terrible odds.
+
+As we ebbed with the battle-tide,
+Fingers of red-hot steel
+Suddenly closed on my side.
+I fell, and began to pray.
+I crawled on my hands and lay
+Where a shallow crater yawned wide;
+Then,--I swooned....
+
+When I woke, it was yet day.
+Fierce was the pain of my wound,
+But I saw it was death to stir,
+For fifty paces away
+Their trenches were.
+In torture I prayed for the dark
+And the stealthy step of my friend
+Who, staunch to the very end,
+Would creep to the danger zone
+And offer his life as a mark
+To save my own.
+
+Night fell. I heard his tread,
+Not stealthy, but firm and serene,
+As if my comrade's head
+Were lifted far from that scene
+Of passion and pain and dread;
+As if my comrade's heart
+In carnage took no part;
+As if my comrade's feet
+Were set on some radiant street
+Such as no darkness might haunt;
+As if my comrade's eyes,
+No deluge of flame could surprise,
+No death and destruction daunt,
+No red-beaked bird dismay,
+Nor sight of decay.
+
+Then in the bursting shells' dim light
+I saw he was clad in white.
+For a moment I thought that I saw the smock
+Of a shepherd in search of his flock.
+Alert were the enemy, too,
+And their bullets flew
+Straight at a mark no bullet could fail;
+For the seeker was tall and his robe was bright;
+But he did not flee nor quail.
+Instead, with unhurrying stride
+He came,
+And gathering my tall frame,
+Like a child, in his arms....
+
+Again I swooned,
+And awoke
+From a blissful dream
+In a cave by a stream.
+My silent comrade had bound my side.
+No pain now was mine, but a wish that I spoke,--
+A mastering wish to serve this man
+Who had ventured through hell my doom to revoke,
+As only the truest of comrades can.
+I begged him to tell me how best I might aid him,
+And urgently prayed him
+Never to leave me, whatever betide;
+When I saw he was hurt--
+Shot through the hands that were clasped in prayer!
+Then, as the dark drops gathered there
+And fell in the dirt,
+The wounds of my friend
+Seemed to me such as no man might bear.
+Those bullet-holes in the patient hands
+Seemed to transcend
+All horrors that ever these war-drenched lands
+Had known or would know till the mad world's end.
+Then suddenly I was aware
+That his feet had been wounded, too;
+And, dimming the white of his side,
+A dull stain grew.
+"You are hurt, White Comrade!" I cried.
+His words I already foreknew:
+"These are old wounds," said he,
+"But of late they have troubled me."
+
+_Robert Haven Schauffler_
+
+
+
+
+FLEURETTE
+
+
+THE WOUNDED CANADIAN SPEAKS:
+My leg? It's off at the knee.
+Do I miss it? Well, some. You see
+I've had it since I was born;
+And lately a devilish corn.
+(I rather chuckle with glee
+To think how I've fooled that corn.)
+
+But I'll hobble around all right.
+It isn't that, it's my face.
+Oh, I know I'm a hideous sight,
+Hardly a thing in place.
+Sort of gargoyle, you'd say.
+Nurse won't give me a glass,
+But I see the folks as they pass
+Shudder and turn away;
+Turn away in distress....
+Mirror enough, I guess.
+I'm gay! You bet I _am_ gay,
+But I wasn't a while ago.
+If you'd seen me even to-day,
+The darnedest picture of woe,
+With this Caliban mug of mine,
+So ravaged and raw and red,
+Turned to the wall--in fine
+Wishing that I was dead....
+What has happened since then,
+Since I lay with my face to the wall,
+The most despairing of men!
+Listen! I'll tell you all.
+
+That _poilu_ across the way,
+With the shrapnel wound on his head,
+Has a sister: she came to-day
+To sit awhile by his bed.
+All morning I heard him fret:
+"Oh, when will she come, Fleurette?"
+
+Then sudden, a joyous cry;
+The tripping of little feet;
+The softest, tenderest sigh;
+A voice so fresh and sweet;
+Clear as a silver bell,
+Fresh as the morning dews:
+"_C'est toi, c'est toi, Marcel!
+Mon frère, comme je suis heureuse!_"
+
+So over the blanket's rim
+I raised my terrible face,
+And I saw--how I envied him!
+A girl of such delicate grace;
+Sixteen, all laughter and love;
+As gay as a linnet, and yet
+As tenderly sweet as a dove;
+Half woman, half child--Fleurette.
+
+Then I turned to the wall again.
+(I was awfully blue, you see,)
+And I thought with a bitter pain:
+"Such visions are not for me."
+So there like a log I lay,
+All hidden, I thought, from view,
+When sudden I heard her say:
+"Ah! Who is that _malheureux_?"
+Then briefly I heard him tell
+(However he came to know)
+How I'd smothered a bomb that fell
+Into the trench, and so
+None of my men were hit,
+Though it busted me up a bit.
+
+Well, I didn't quiver an eye,
+And he chattered and there she sat;
+And I fancied I heard her sigh--
+But I wouldn't just swear to that.
+And maybe she wasn't so bright,
+Though she talked in a merry strain,
+And I closed my eyes ever so tight,
+Yet I saw her ever so plain:
+Her dear little tilted nose,
+Her delicate, dimpled chin,
+Her mouth like a budding rose,
+And the glistening pearls within;
+Her eyes like the violet:
+Such a rare little queen--Fleurette.
+
+And at last when she rose to go,
+The light was a little dim,
+And I ventured to peep, and so
+I saw her, graceful and slim,
+And she kissed him and kissed him, and oh
+How I envied and envied him!
+
+So when she was gone I said
+In rather a dreary voice
+To him of the opposite bed:
+"Ah, friend, how you must rejoice!
+But me, I'm a thing of dread.
+For me nevermore the bliss,
+The thrill of a woman's kiss."
+
+Then I stopped, for lo! she was there,
+And a great light shone in her eyes.
+And me! I could only stare,
+I was taken so by surprise,
+When gently she bent her head:
+"_May I kiss you, sergeant?_" she said.
+
+Then she kissed my burning lips,
+With her mouth like a scented flower,
+And I thrilled to the finger-tips,
+And I hadn't even the power
+To say: "God bless you, dear!"
+And I felt such a precious tear
+Pall on my withered cheek,
+And darn it! I couldn't speak.
+
+And so she went sadly away,
+And I know that my eyes were wet.
+Ah, not to my dying day
+Will I forget, forget!
+Can you wonder now I am gay?
+God bless her, that little Fleurette!
+
+_Robert W. Service_
+
+
+
+
+NOT TO KEEP
+
+
+They sent him back to her. The letter came
+Saying ... and she could have him. And before
+She could be sure there was no hidden ill
+Under the formal writing, he was in her sight--
+Living.--They gave him back to her alive--
+How else? They are not known to send the dead--
+And not disfigured visibly. His face?--
+His hands? She had to look--to ask,
+"What was it, dear?" And she had given all
+And still she had all--_they_ had--they the lucky!
+Wasn't she glad now? Everything seemed won,
+And all the rest for them permissible ease.
+She had to ask, "What was it, dear?"
+                                     "Enough,
+Yet not enough. A bullet through and through,
+High in the breast. Nothing but what good care
+And medicine and rest--and you a week,
+Can cure me of to go again." The same
+Grim giving to do over for them both.
+She dared no more than ask him with her eyes
+How was it with him for a second trial.
+And with his eyes he asked her not to ask.
+They had given him back to her, but not to keep.
+
+_Robert Frost_
+
+
+
+
+THE DEAD
+
+
+I
+
+Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!
+  There's none of these so lonely and poor of old,
+  But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.
+These laid the world away; poured out the red
+Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be
+  Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,
+  That men call age; and those who would have been,
+Their sons, they gave, their immortality.
+
+  Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth,
+    Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain.
+  Honour has come back, as a king, to earth,
+      And paid his subjects with a royal wage;
+    And Nobleness walks in our ways again;
+      And we have come into our heritage.
+
+
+II
+
+  These hearts were woven of human joys and cares
+Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.
+  The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,
+And sunset, and the colours of the earth.
+  These had seen movement and heard music; known
+Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;
+  Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;
+Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.
+  There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter
+  And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,
+Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance
+  And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white
+Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,
+  A width, a shining peace, under the night.
+
+_Rupert Brooke_
+
+
+
+
+THE ISLAND OF SKYROS
+
+
+Here, where we stood together, we three men,
+  Before the war had swept us to the East
+Three thousand miles away, I stand again
+  And bear the bells, and breathe, and go to feast.
+We trod the same path, to the selfsame place,
+  Yet here I stand, having beheld their graves,
+Skyros whose shadows the great seas erase,
+  And Seddul Bahr that ever more blood craves.
+So, since we communed here, our bones have been
+  Nearer, perhaps, than they again will be,
+Earth and the worldwide battle lie between,
+  Death lies between, and friend-destroying sea.
+Yet here, a year ago, we talked and stood
+As I stand now, with pulses beating blood.
+
+I saw her like a shadow on the sky
+  In the last light, a blur upon the sea,
+Then the gale's darkness put the shadow by,
+  But from one grave that island talked to me;
+And, in the midnight, in the breaking storm,
+  I saw its blackness and a blinking light,
+And thought, "So death obscures your gentle form,
+  So memory strives to make the darkness bright;
+And, in that heap of rocks, your body lies,
+  Part of the island till the planet ends,
+My gentle comrade, beautiful and wise,
+  Part of this crag this bitter surge offends,
+While I, who pass, a little obscure thing,
+War with this force, and breathe, and am its king."
+
+_John Masefield_
+
+
+
+
+FOR THE FALLEN
+
+
+With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
+England mourns for her dead across the sea.
+Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
+Fallen in the cause of the free.
+
+Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
+Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
+There is music in the midst of desolation
+And a glory that shines upon our tears.
+
+They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
+Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
+They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted:
+They fell with their faces to the foe.
+
+They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
+Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
+At the going down of the sun and in the morning
+We will remember them.
+
+They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
+They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
+They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
+They sleep beyond England's foam.
+
+But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
+Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
+To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
+As the stars are known to the Night;
+
+As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
+Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
+As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
+To the end, to the end, they remain.
+
+_Laurence Binyon_
+
+
+
+
+TWO SONNETS
+
+
+I
+
+Saints have adored the lofty soul of you.
+Poets have whitened at your high renown.
+We stand among the many millions who
+Do hourly wait to pass your pathway down.
+You, so familiar, once were strange: we tried
+To live as of your presence unaware.
+But now in every road on every side
+We see your straight and steadfast signpost there.
+
+I think it like that signpost in my land
+Hoary and tall, which pointed me to go
+Upward, into the hills, on the right hand,
+Where the mists swim and the winds shriek and blow,
+A homeless land and friendless, but a land
+I did not know and that I wished to know.
+
+
+II
+
+Such, such is Death: no triumph: no defeat:
+Only an empty pail, a slate rubbed clean,
+A merciful putting away of what has been.
+
+And this we know: Death is not Life effete,
+Life crushed, the broken pail. We who have seen
+So marvellous things know well the end not yet.
+
+Victor and vanquished are a-one in death:
+Coward and brave: friend, foe. Ghosts do not say,
+"Come, what was your record when you drew breath?"
+But a big blot has hid each yesterday
+So poor, so manifestly incomplete.
+And your bright Promise, withered long and sped,
+Is touched, stirs, rises, opens and grows sweet
+And blossoms and is you, when you are dead.
+
+_Charles Hamilton Sorley_
+
+_June 12, 1915_
+
+
+
+
+"HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE"
+
+
+Nay, nay, sweet England, do not grieve!
+  Not one of these poor men who died
+But did within his soul believe
+  That death for thee was glorified.
+
+Ever they watched it hovering near
+  That mystery 'yond thought to plumb,
+Perchance sometimes in loathed fear
+  They heard cold Danger whisper, Come!--
+
+Heard and obeyed. O, if thou weep
+  Such courage and honour, beauty, care,
+Be it for joy that those who sleep
+  Only thy joy could share.
+
+_Walter de la Mare_
+
+
+
+
+THE DEBT
+
+
+No more old England will they see--
+Those men who've died for you and me.
+
+So lone and cold they lie; but we,
+We still have life; we still may greet
+Our pleasant friends in home and street;
+We still have life, are able still
+To climb the turf of Bignor Hill,
+To see the placid sheep go by,
+To hear the sheep-dog's eager cry,
+To feel the sun, to taste the rain,
+To smell the Autumn's scents again
+Beneath the brown and gold and red
+Which old October's brush has spread,
+To hear the robin in the lane,
+To look upon the English sky.
+
+So young they were, so strong and well,
+Until the bitter summons fell--
+Too young to die.
+Yet there on foreign soil they lie,
+So pitiful, with glassy eye
+And limbs all tumbled anyhow:
+Quite finished, now.
+On every heart--lest we forget--
+Secure at home--engrave this debt!
+
+Too delicate is flesh to be
+The shield that nations interpose
+'Twixt red Ambition and his foes--
+The bastion of Liberty.
+So beautiful their bodies were,
+Built with so exquisite a care:
+So young and fit and lithe and fair.
+The very flower of us were they,
+The very flower, but yesterday!
+Yet now so pitiful they lie,
+Where love of country bade them hie
+To fight this fierce Caprice--and die.
+All mangled now, where shells have burst,
+And lead and steel have done their worst;
+The tender tissues ploughed away,
+The years' slow processes effaced:
+The Mother of us all--disgraced.
+
+And some leave wives behind, young wives;
+Already some have launched new lives:
+A little daughter, little son--
+For thus this blundering world goes on.
+But never more will any see
+The old secure felicity,
+The kindnesses that made us glad
+Before the world went mad.
+They'll never hear another bird,
+Another gay or loving word--
+Those men who lie so cold and lone,
+Far in a country not their own;
+Those men who died for you and me,
+That England still might sheltered be
+And all our lives go on the same
+(Although to live is almost shame).
+
+_E.V. Lucas_
+
+
+
+
+_REQUIESCANT_
+
+
+In lonely watches night by night
+Great visions burst upon my sight,
+For down the stretches of the sky
+The hosts of dead go marching by.
+
+Strange ghostly banners o'er them float,
+Strange bugles sound an awful note,
+And all their faces and their eyes
+Are lit with starlight from the skies.
+
+The anguish and the pain have passed
+And peace hath come to them at last,
+But in the stern looks linger still
+The iron purpose and the will.
+
+Dear Christ, who reign'st above the flood
+Of human tears and human blood,
+A weary road these men have trod,
+O house them in the home of God!
+
+_Frederick George Scott_
+
+_In a Field near Ypres_
+
+_April, 1915_
+
+
+
+
+TO OUR FALLEN
+
+
+Ye sleepers, who will sing you?
+  We can but give our tears--
+Ye dead men, who shall bring you
+  Fame in the coming years?
+Brave souls ... but who remembers
+The flame that fired your embers?...
+Deep, deep the sleep that holds you
+  Who one time had no peers.
+
+Yet maybe Fame's but seeming
+  And praise you'd set aside,
+Content to go on dreaming,
+  Yea, happy to have died
+If of all things you prayed for--
+All things your valour paid for--
+One prayer is not forgotten,
+  One purchase not denied.
+
+But God grants your dear England
+  A strength that shall not cease
+Till she have won for all the Earth
+  From ruthless men release,
+And made supreme upon her
+Mercy and Truth and Honour--
+Is this the thing you died for?
+  Oh, Brothers, sleep in peace!
+
+_Robert Ernest Vernède_
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD SOLDIER
+
+
+Lest the young soldiers be strange in heaven,
+  God bids the old soldier they all adored
+Come to Him and wait for them, clean, new-shriven,
+  A happy doorkeeper in the House of the Lord.
+
+Lest it abash them, the strange new splendour,
+  Lest it affright them, the new robes clean;
+Here's an old face, now, long-tried, and tender,
+  A word and a hand-clasp as they troop in.
+
+"My boys," he greets them: and heaven is homely,
+  He their great captain in days gone o'er;
+Dear is the friend's face, honest and comely,
+  Waiting to welcome them by the strange door.
+
+_Katharine Tynan_
+
+
+
+
+LORD KITCHENER
+
+
+Unflinching hero, watchful to foresee
+  And face thy country's peril wheresoe'er,
+  Directing war and peace with equal care,
+Till by long duty ennobled thou wert he
+Whom England call'd and bade "Set my arm free
+  To obey my will and save my honour fair,"--
+  What day the foe presumed on her despair
+And she herself had trust in none but thee:
+
+Among Herculean deeds the miracle
+  That mass'd the labour of ten years in one
+  Shall be thy monument. Thy work was done
+Ere we could thank thee; and the high sea swell
+Surgeth unheeding where thy proud ship fell
+  By the lone Orkneys, at the set of sun.
+
+_Robert Bridges_
+
+_June 8, 1916_
+
+
+
+
+KITCHENER
+
+
+There is wild water from the north;
+The headlands darken in their foam
+As with a threat of challenge stubborn earth
+Booms at that far wild sea-line charging home.
+
+The night shall stand upon the shifting sea
+As yesternight stood there,
+And hear the cry of waters through the air,
+The iron voice of headlands start and rise--
+The noise of winds for mastery
+That screams to hear the thunder in those cries.
+But now henceforth there shall be heard
+From Brough of Bursay, Marwick Head,
+And shadows of the distant coast,
+Another voice bestirred--
+Telling of something greatly lost
+Somewhere below the tidal glooms, and dead.
+Beyond the uttermost
+Of aught the night may hear on any seas
+From tempest-known wild water's cry, and roar
+Of iron shadows looming from the shore,
+It shall be heard--and when the Orcades
+Sleep in a hushed Atlantic's starry folds
+As smoothly as, far down below the tides,
+Sleep on the windless broad sea-wolds
+Where this night's shipwreck hides.
+
+By many a sea-holm where the shock
+Of ocean's battle falls, and into spray
+Gives up its ghosts of strife; by reef and rock
+Ravaged by their eternal brute affray
+With monstrous frenzies of their shore's green foe;
+Where overstream and overfall and undertow
+Strive, snatch away;
+A wistful voice, without a sound,
+Shall dwell beside Pomona, on the sea,
+And speak the homeward- and the outward-bound,
+And touch the helm of passing minds
+And bid them steer as wistfully--
+Saying: "He did great work, until the winds
+And waters hereabout that night betrayed
+Him to the drifting death! His work went on--
+He would not be gainsaid....
+Though where his bones are, no man knows, not one!"
+
+_John Helston_
+
+
+
+
+THE FALLEN SUBALTERN
+
+
+The starshells float above, the bayonets glisten;
+  We bear our fallen friend without a sound;
+Below the waiting legions lie and listen
+  To us, who march upon their burial-ground.
+
+Wound in the flag of England, here we lay him;
+  The guns will flash and thunder o'er the grave;
+What other winding sheet should now array him,
+  What other music should salute the brave?
+
+As goes the Sun-god in his chariot glorious,
+  When all his golden banners are unfurled,
+So goes the soldier, fallen but victorious,
+  And leaves behind a twilight in the world.
+
+And those who come this way, in days hereafter,
+  Will know that here a boy for England fell,
+Who looked at danger with the eyes of laughter,
+  And on the charge his days were ended well.
+
+One last salute; the bayonets clash and glisten;
+  With arms reversed we go without a sound:
+One more has joined the men who lie and listen
+  To us, who march upon their burial-ground.
+
+_Herbert Asquith_
+
+_1915_
+
+
+
+
+THE DEBT UNPAYABLE
+
+
+What have I given,
+  Bold sailor on the sea,
+In earth or heaven,
+  That you should die for me?
+
+What can I give,
+  O soldier, leal and brave,
+Long as I live,
+  To pay the life you gave?
+
+What tithe or part
+  Can I return to thee,
+O stricken heart,
+  That thou shouldst break for me?
+
+The wind of Death
+  For you has slain life's flowers,
+It withereth
+  (God grant) all weeds in ours.
+
+_F.W. Bourdillon_
+
+
+
+
+THE MESSAGES
+
+
+"I cannot quite remember.... There were five
+Dropt dead beside me in the trench--and three
+Whispered their dying messages to me...."
+
+Back from the trenches, more dead than alive,
+Stone-deaf and dazed, and with a broken knee,
+He hobbled slowly, muttering vacantly:
+
+"I cannot quite remember.... There were five
+Dropt dead beside me in the trench, and three
+Whispered their dying messages to me....
+
+"Their friends are waiting, wondering how they thrive--
+Waiting a word in silence patiently....
+But what they said, or who their friends may be
+
+"I cannot quite remember.... There were five
+Dropt dead beside me in the trench--and three
+Whispered their dying messages to me...."
+
+_Wilfrid Wilson Gibson_
+
+
+
+
+A CROSS IN FLANDERS
+
+In the face of death, they say, he joked--he had no fear;
+  His comrades, when they laid him in a Flanders grave,
+Wrote on a rough-hewn cross--a Calvary stood near--
+  "Without a fear he gave
+
+"His life, cheering his men, with laughter on his lips."
+  So wrote they, mourning him. Yet was there only one
+Who fully understood his laughter, his gay quips,
+  One only, she alone--
+
+She who, not so long since, when love was new--confest,
+  Herself toyed with light laughter while her eyes were dim,
+And jested, while with reverence despite her jest
+  She worshipped God and him.
+
+She knew--O Love, O Death!--his soul had been at grips
+  With the most solemn things. For _she_, was _she_ not dear?
+Yes, he was brave, most brave, with laughter on his lips,
+  The braver for his fear!
+
+_G. Rostrevor Hamilton_
+
+
+
+
+RESURRECTION
+
+
+Not long did we lie on the torn, red field of pain.
+We fell, we lay, we slumbered, we took rest,
+With the wild nerves quiet at last, and the vexed brain
+Cleared of the wingèd nightmares, and the breast
+Freed of the heavy dreams of hearts afar.
+We rose at last under the morning star.
+We rose, and greeted our brothers, and welcomed our foes.
+We rose; like the wheat when the wind is over, we rose.
+With shouts we rose, with gasps and incredulous cries,
+With bursts of singing, and silence, and awestruck eyes,
+With broken laughter, half tears, we rose from the sod,
+With welling tears and with glad lips, whispering, "God."
+Like babes, refreshed from sleep, like children, we rose,
+Brimming with deep content, from our dreamless repose.
+And, "What do you call it?" asked one. "I thought I was dead."
+"You are," cried another. "We're all of us dead and flat."
+"I'm alive as a cricket. There's something wrong with your head."
+They stretched their limbs and argued it out where they sat.
+And over the wide field friend and foe
+Spoke of small things, remembering not old woe
+Of war and hunger, hatred and fierce words.
+They sat and listened to the brooks and birds,
+And watched the starlight perish in pale flame,
+Wondering what God would look like when He came.
+
+_Hermann Hagedorn_
+
+
+
+
+TO A HERO
+
+
+We may not know how fared your soul before
+  Occasion came to try it by this test.
+Perchance, it used on lofty wings to soar;
+  Again, it may have dwelt in lowly nest.
+
+We do not know if bygone knightly strain
+  Impelled you then, or blood of humble clod
+Defied the dread adventure to attain
+  The cross of honor or the peace of God.
+
+We see but this, that when the moment came
+  You raised on high, then drained, the solemn cup--
+The grail of death; that, touched by valor's flame,
+  The kindled spirit burned the body up.
+
+_Oscar C.A. Child_
+
+
+
+
+RUPERT BROOKE
+
+(IN MEMORIAM)
+
+
+I never knew you save as all men know
+  Twitter of mating birds, flutter of wings
+In April coverts, and the streams that flow--
+  One of the happy voices of our Springs.
+
+A voice for ever stilled, a memory,
+  Since you went eastward with the fighting ships,
+A hero of the great new Odyssey,
+  And God has laid His finger on your lips.
+
+_Moray Dalton_
+
+
+
+
+THE PLAYERS
+
+
+We challenged Death. He threw with weighted dice.
+  We laughed and paid the forfeit, glad to pay--
+Being recompensed beyond our sacrifice
+  With that nor Death nor Time can take away.
+
+_Francis Bickley_
+
+
+
+
+A SONG
+
+
+Oh, red is the English rose,
+And the lilies of France are pale,
+And the poppies grow in the golden wheat,
+For the men whose eyes are heavy with sleep,
+Where the ground is red as the English rose,
+And the lips as the lilies of France are pale,
+And the ebbing pulses beat fainter and fainter and fail.
+
+Oh, red is the English rose,
+And the lilies of France are pale.
+And the poppies lie in the level corn
+For the men who sleep and never return.
+But wherever they lie an English rose
+So red, and a lily of France so pale,
+Will grow for a love that never and never can fail.
+
+_Charles Alexander Richmond_
+
+
+
+
+HARVEST MOON
+
+
+Over the twilight field,
+Over the glimmering field
+And bleeding furrows, with their sodden yield
+Of sheaves that still did writhe,
+After the scythe;
+The teeming field, and darkly overstrewn
+With all the garnered fullness of that noon--
+Two looked upon each other.
+One was a Woman, men had called their mother:
+And one the Harvest Moon.
+
+And one the Harvest Moon
+Who stood, who gazed
+On those unquiet gleanings, where they bled;
+Till the lone Woman said:
+
+"But we were crazed....
+We should laugh now together, I and you;
+We two.
+You, for your ever dreaming it was worth
+A star's while to look on, and light the earth;
+And I, for ever telling to my mind
+Glory it was and gladness, to give birth
+To human kind.
+I gave the breath,--and thought it not amiss,
+I gave the breath to men,
+For men to slay again;
+Lording it over anguish, all to give
+My life, that men might live,
+For this.
+
+"You will be laughing now, remembering
+We called you once Dead World, and barren thing.
+Yes, so we called you then,
+You, far more wise
+Than to give life to men."
+
+Over the field that there
+Gave back the skies
+A scattered upward stare
+From sightless eyes,
+The furrowed field that lay
+Striving awhile, through many a bleeding dune
+Of throbbing clay,--but dumb and quiet soon,
+She looked; and went her way,
+The Harvest Moon.
+
+_Josephine Preston Peabody_
+
+
+
+
+HARVEST MOON: 1916
+
+
+Moon, slow rising, over the trembling sea-rim,
+Moon of the lifted tides and their folded burden.
+Look, look down. And gather the blinded oceans,
+    Moon of compassion.
+
+Come, white Silence, over the one sea pathway:
+Pour with hallowing hands on the surge and outcry,
+Silver flame; and over the famished blackness,
+    Petals of moonlight.
+
+Once again, the formless void of a world-wreck
+Gropes its way through the echoing dark of chaos;
+Tide on tide, to the calling, lost horizons,--
+    One in the darkness.
+
+You that veil the light of the all-beholding,
+Shed white tidings down to the dooms of longing,
+Down to the timeless dark; and the sunken treasures,
+    One in the darkness.
+
+Touch, and harken,--under that shrouding silver,
+Rise and fall, the heart of the sea and its legions,
+All and one; one with the breath of the deathless,
+    Rising and falling.
+
+Touch and waken so, to a far hereafter,
+Ebb and flow, the deep, and the dead in their longing:
+Till at last, on the hungering face of the waters,
+    There shall be Light.
+
+_Light of Light, give us to see, for their sake.
+Light of Light, grant them eternal peace;
+And let light perpetual shine upon them;
+              Light, everlasting._
+
+_Josephine Preston Peabody_
+
+
+
+
+MY SON
+
+
+Here is his little cambric frock
+    That I laid by in lavender so sweet,
+And here his tiny shoe and sock
+    I made with loving care for his dear feet.
+
+I fold the frock across my breast,
+    And in imagination, ah, my sweet,
+Once more I hush my babe to rest,
+    And once again I warm those little feet.
+
+Where do those strong young feet now stand?
+    In flooded trench, half numb to cold or pain,
+Or marching through the desert sand
+    To some dread place that they may never gain.
+
+God guide him and his men to-day!
+    Though death may lurk in any tree or hill,
+His brave young spirit is their stay,
+    Trusting in that they'll follow where he will.
+
+They love him for his tender heart
+    When poverty or sorrow asks his aid,
+But he must see each do his part--
+    Of cowardice alone he is afraid.
+
+I ask no honours on the field,
+    That other men have won as brave as he--
+I only pray that God may shield
+    My son, and bring him safely back to me!
+
+_Ada Tyrrell_
+
+
+
+
+TO THE OTHERS
+
+
+This was the gleam then that lured from far
+Your son and my son to the Holy War:
+Your son and my son for the accolade
+With the banner of Christ over them, in steel arrayed.
+
+All quiet roads of life ran on to this;
+When they were little for their mother's kiss.
+Little feet hastening, so soft, unworn,
+To the vows and the vigil and the road of thorn.
+
+Your son and my son, the downy things,
+Sheltered in mother's breast, by mother's wings,
+Should they be broken in the Lord's wars--Peace!
+He Who has given them--are they not His?
+
+Dream of knight's armour and the battle-shout,
+Fighting and falling at the last redoubt,
+Dream of long dying on the field of slain;
+This was the dream that lured, nor lured in vain.
+
+These were the Voices they heard from far;
+Bugles and trumpets of the Holy War.
+Your son and my son have heard the call,
+Your son and my son have stormed the wall.
+
+Your son and my son, clean as new swords;
+Your man and my man and now the Lord's!
+Your son and my son for the Great Crusade,
+With the banner of Christ over them--our knights new-made.
+
+_Katharine Tynan_
+
+
+
+
+THE JOURNEY
+
+
+I went upon a journey
+To countries far away,
+From province unto province
+To pass my holiday.
+
+And when I came to Serbia,
+In a quiet little town
+At an inn with a flower-filled garden
+With a soldier I sat down.
+
+Now he lies dead at Belgrade.
+You heard the cannon roar!
+It boomed from Rome to Stockholm,
+It pealed to the far west shore.
+
+And when I came to Russia,
+A man with flowing hair
+Called me his friend and showed me
+A flowing river there.
+
+Now he lies dead at Lemberg,
+Beside another stream,
+In his dark eyes extinguished
+The friendship of his dream.
+
+And then I crossed two countries
+Whose names on my lips are sealed....
+Not yet had they flung their challenge
+Nor led upon the field
+
+Sons who lie dead at Liège,
+Dead by the Russian lance,
+Dead in southern mountains,
+Dead through the farms of France.
+
+I stopped in the land of Louvain,
+So tranquil, happy, then.
+I lived with a good old woman,
+With her sons and her grandchildren.
+
+Now they lie dead at Louvain,
+Those simple kindly folk.
+Some heard, some fled. It must be
+Some slept, for they never woke.
+
+I came to France. I was thirsty.
+I sat me down to dine.
+The host and his young wife served me
+With bread and fruit and wine.
+
+Now he lies dead at Cambrai--
+He was sent among the first.
+In dreams she sees him dying
+Of wounds, of heat, of thirst.
+
+At last I passed to Dover
+And saw upon the shore
+A tall young English captain
+And soldiers, many more.
+
+Now they lie dead at Dixmude,
+The brave, the strong, the young!
+I turn unto my homeland,
+All my journey sung!
+
+_Grace Fallow Norton_
+
+
+
+
+A MOTHER'S DEDICATION
+
+
+Dear son of mine, the baby days are over,
+I can no longer shield you from the earth;
+Yet in my heart always I must remember
+How through the dark I fought to give you birth.
+
+Dear son of mine, by all the lives behind you;
+By all our fathers fought for in the past;
+In this great war to which your birth has brought you,
+Acquit you well, hold you our honour fast!
+
+God guard you, son of mine, where'er you wander;
+God lead the banners under which you fight;
+You are my all, I give you to the Nation,
+God shall uphold you that you fight aright.
+
+_Margaret Peterson_
+
+
+
+
+TO A MOTHER
+
+
+Robbed mother of the stricken Motherland--
+  Two hearts in one and one among the dead,
+  Before your grave with an uncovered head
+I, that am man, disquiet and silent stand
+In reverence. It is your blood they shed;
+  It is your sacred self that they demand,
+  For one you bore in joy and hope, and planned
+Would make yourself eternal, now has fled.
+
+But though you yielded him unto the knife
+  And altar with a royal sacrifice
+Of your most precious self and dearer life--
+  Your master gem and pearl above all price--
+Content you; for the dawn this night restores
+Shall be the dayspring of his soul and yours.
+
+_Eden Phillpotts_
+
+
+
+
+SPRING IN WAR-TIME
+
+
+I feel the spring far off, far off,
+    The faint, far scent of bud and leaf--
+Oh, how can spring take heart to come
+    To a world in grief,
+    Deep grief?
+
+The sun turns north, the days grow long,
+    Later the evening star grows bright--
+How can the daylight linger on
+    For men to fight,
+    Still fight?
+
+The grass is waking in the ground,
+    Soon it will rise and blow in waves--
+How can it have the heart to sway
+    Over the graves,
+    New graves?
+
+Under the boughs where lovers walked
+    The apple-blooms will shed their breath--
+But what of all the lovers now
+    Parted by Death,
+    Grey Death?
+
+_Sara Teasdale_
+
+
+
+
+OCCASIONAL NOTES
+
+
+ASQUITH, HERBERT. He received a commission in the Royal Marine Artillery
+at the end of 1914 and served as a Second Lieutenant with an Anti-
+Aircraft Battery in April, 1915, returning wounded during the following
+June. He became a full Lieutenant in July, but was invalided home after
+about six weeks. In June, 1916, he joined the Royal Field Artillery and
+went out to France once again with a battery of field guns at the
+beginning of March, 1917. Since that time he has been steadily on active
+service.
+
+BEWSHER, PAUL. He was educated at St. Paul's School, and is a
+Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Air Service.
+
+BINYON, LAURENCE. His war writings include _The Winnowing Fan_ and _The
+Anvil_, published in America under the title of _The Cause_.
+
+BRIDGES, ROBERT. He has been Poet-Laureate of England since 1913.
+
+BROOKE, RUPERT. He was born at Rugby on August 3, 1887, and became a
+Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, in 1913. He was made a
+Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in September, 1914;
+accompanied the Antwerp expedition in October of the same year; and
+sailed with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force on February
+28, 1915. He died in the Aegean, on April 23, and lies buried in the
+island of Skyros. See the memorial poems in this volume, _The Island of
+Skyros_, by John Masefield; and _Rupert Brooke_, by Moray Dalton. His
+war poetry appears in the volume entitled _1914 and other Poems_, and in
+his _Collected Poems_.
+
+CAMPBELL, WILFRED. This well-known Canadian poet has lately published
+_Sagas of Vaster Britain, War Lyrics_, and _Canada's Responsibility to
+the Empire_. His son, Captain Basil Campbell, joined the Second
+Pioneers.
+
+CHESTERTON, CECIL EDWARD. He has been editor of the _New Witness_ since
+1912, and is a private in the Highland Light Infantry. His war writings
+include _The Prussian hath said in his Heart_, and _The Perils of
+Peace_.
+
+CHESTERTON, GILBERT KEITH. This brilliant and versatile author has
+written many essays on phases of the war, including weekly contributions
+to _The Illustrated London News_.
+
+CONE, HELEN GRAY. She has been Professor of English in Hunter College
+since 1899. Her war poetry appears in the volume entitled _A Chant of
+Love for England, and other Poems_.
+
+COULSON, LESLIE. He joined the British Army in September, 1914, declined
+a commission and served in Egypt, Malta, Gallipoli (where he was
+wounded), and Prance. He became Sergeant in the City of London Regiment
+(Royal Fusiliers) and was mortally wounded while leading a charge
+against the Germans in October, 1916.
+
+DIXON, WILLIAM MACNEILE. He is Professor of English Language and
+Literature in the University of Glasgow. His war writings include _The
+British Navy at War_ and _The Fleets behind the Fleet_.
+
+DOYLE, SIR ARTHUR CONAN. He has written much of interest on the war,
+especially as regards the western campaigns.
+
+FIELD, A.N. He is a private in the Second New Zealand Brigade.
+
+FRANKAU, GILBERT. Upon the declaration of war he joined the Ninth East
+Surrey Regiment (Infantry), with the rank of Lieutenant. He was
+transferred to the Royal Field Artillery in March, 1915, and was
+appointed Adjutant during the following July. He proceeded to France in
+that capacity, fought in the battle of Loos, served at Ypres during the
+winter of 1915-16, and thereafter took part in the battle of the Somme.
+In October, 1916, he was recalled to England, was promoted to the rank
+of Staff Captain in the Intelligence Corps, and was sent to Italy to
+engage in special duties.
+
+FREEMAN, JOHN. He was Lieutenant-Colonel in the Russian A. M. S., on the
+Bacteriological Mission to Galicia, 1914.
+
+GALSWORTHY, JOHN. Mr. Galsworthy, the well-known novelist, poet, and
+dramatist, served for several months as an expert _masseur_ in an
+English hospital for French soldiers at Martouret.
+
+GIBSON, WILFRID WILSON. His war writings include _Battle_, etc.
+
+GRENFELL, THE HON. JULIAN, D.S.O. He was a Captain in the First Royal
+Dragoons; was wounded near Ypres on March 13, 1915; and died at Boulogne
+on May 26. He was the eldest son of Lord Desborough. "Julian set an
+example of light-hearted courage," wrote Lieutenant-Colonel Machlachan,
+of the Eighth Service Battalion Rifle Brigade, "which is famous all
+through the Army in France, and has stood out even above the most
+lion-hearted."
+
+HALL, JAMES NORMAN. He is a member of the American Aviation Corps in
+France, and author of _Kitchener's Mob_ and _High Adventure_. He was
+captured by the Germans, May 7, 1918, after an air battle inside the
+enemy's lines.
+
+HARDY, THOMAS. He received the Order of Merit in 1910.
+
+HEMPHREY, MALCOLM. He is a Lance-Corporal in the Army Ordnance Corps,
+Nairobi, British East Africa.
+
+HEWLETT, MAURICE HENRY. He has published a group of his war poems under
+the title _Sing-Songs of the War_.
+
+HODGSON, W.N. He was the son of the Bishop of Ipswich and Edmundsbury,
+and was a Lieutenant in the Devon Regiment. His pen-name is "Edward
+Melbourne." He won the Military Cross. He was killed during the battle
+of the Somme, in July, 1916.
+
+HOWARD, GEOFFREY. He is a Lieutenant in the Royal Fusiliers.
+
+HUSSEY, DYNELEY. He is a Lieutenant in the Thirteenth Battalion of the
+Lancashire Fusiliers, and has published his war poems in a volume
+entitled _Fleur de Lys_.
+
+HUTCHINSON, HENRY WILLIAM. He was the son of Sir Sidney Hutchinson, and
+was educated at St. Paul's School. He was a Second Lieutenant in the
+Middlesex Regiment. He was killed while on active service in France,
+March 13, 1917, at the age of nineteen.
+
+KAUFMAN, HERBERT. He has published _The Song of the Guns_, which was
+later republished as _The Hell-Gate of Soissons_.
+
+KIPLING, RUDYARD. Mr. Kipling won the Nobel Prize for Literature in
+1907. His war writings include _The New Armies in Training, France at
+War_, and _Sea Warfare_.
+
+KNIGHT-ADKIN, JAMES. When war was declared he was a Master at the
+Imperial Service College, Windsor, and Lieutenant in the Officers'
+Training Corps. He volunteered on the first day of the war and was
+attached to the Fourth Battalion, Gloucester Regiment. He went into the
+trenches in March, 1915, was wounded in June, and was invalided home. In
+1916 he returned to France, and is now a Captain in charge of a
+prisoner-of-war camp.
+
+LEE, JOSEPH. He enlisted, at the outbreak of the war, as a private in
+the 1st/4th Battalion of the Black Watch, Royal Highlanders, in which
+corps he has served on all parts of the British front in France and
+Flanders. Sergeant Lee has both composed and illustrated a volume of
+war-poems entitled _Ballads of Battle_.
+
+LUCAS, EDWARD VERRALL. Mr. Lucas has undertaken hospital service.
+
+MASEFIELD, JOHN. Mr. Masefield, whose lectures in America early in 1916
+quickened interest in his work and personality, has been very active
+during the war. He has written an excellent study of the campaign on the
+Gallipoli Peninsula, having served there and also in France in
+connection with Red Cross work.
+
+MORGAN, CHARLES LANGBRIDGE. He is a Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Naval
+Division, and is a Prisoner of War in Holland.
+
+NEWBOLT, SIR HENRY. He is the author of _The Book of the Thin Red Line,
+Story of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry_, and
+_Stories of the Great War_.
+
+NOYES, ALFRED. His war writings include _A Salute to the Fleet_, etc.
+
+OGILVIE, WILLIAM HENRY. He was Professor of Agricultural Journalism in
+the Iowa State College, U.S.A., from 1905 to 1907. His war writings
+include _Australia and Other Verses_.
+
+OSWALD, SYDNEY. He is a Major in the King's Royal Rifle Corps.
+
+PHILLIPS, STEPHEN. His war writings include _Armageddon_, etc. He died
+December 9, 1915.
+
+PHILLPOTTS, EDEN. Among his war writings are _The Human Boy and the
+War_, and _Plain Song, 1914-16_.
+
+RATCLIFFE, A. VICTOR. He was a Lieutenant in the 10th/13th West
+Yorkshire Regiment, and was killed in action on July 1, 1916.
+
+RAWNSLEY, REV. HARDWICKE DRUMMOND. He has been Canon of Carlisle and
+Honorary Chaplain to the King since 1912.
+
+ROBERTSON, ALEXANDER. He is a Corporal in the Twelfth York and Lancaster
+Regiment. He was reported "missing" in July, 1916.
+
+ROSS, SIR RONALD. He is the President of the Poetry Society of Great
+Britain, and is a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Army Medical Corps.
+
+SCOLLARD, CLINTON. His war writings include _The Vale of Shadows, and
+Other Verses of the Great War_, and _Italy in Arms, and Other Verses_.
+
+SCOTT, CANON FREDERICK GEORGE. He is a Major in the Third Brigade of the
+First Canadian Division, British Expeditionary Force.
+
+SEAMAN, SIR OWEN. He has been the editor of _Punch_ since 1906. His war
+writings include _War-Time_ and _Made in England_.
+
+SEEGER, ALAN. Among the Americans who have served at the front there is
+none who has produced poetic work of such high quality as that of Alan
+Seeger. He was born in New York on June 22nd, 1888; was educated at the
+Horace Mann School; Hackley School, Tarrytown, New York; and Harvard
+College. In 1912 he went to Paris and lived the life of a student and
+writer in the Latin Quarter. During the third week of the war he
+enlisted in the Foreign Legion of France. His service as a soldier was
+steady, loyal and uncomplaining--indeed, exultant would not be too
+strong a word to describe the spirit which seems constantly to have
+animated his military career. He took part in the battle of Champagne.
+Afterwards, his regiment was allowed to recuperate until May, 1916. On
+July 1 a general advance was ordered, and on the evening of July 4 the
+Legion was ordered to attack the village of Belloy-en-Santerre. Seeger's
+squad was caught by the fire of six machine-guns and he himself was
+wounded in several places, but he continued to cheer his comrades as
+they rushed on in what proved a successful charge. He died on the
+morning of July 5. The twenty or more poems he wrote during active
+service are included in the collected _Poems by Alan Seeger_, with an
+introduction by William Archer.
+
+SORLEY, CHARLES HAMILTON. He was born at Old Aberdeen on May 19, 1895.
+He was a student at Marlborough College from the autumn of 1908 until
+the end of 1913, at which time he was elected to a scholarship at
+University College, Oxford. After leaving school in England, he spent
+several months as a student and observer in Germany. When the war broke
+out he returned home and was gazetted Second Lieutenant in the Seventh
+(Service) Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment. In November he was made a
+Lieutenant, and in August, 1915, a Captain. He served in France from May
+30 to October 13, 1915, when he was killed in action near Hulluch. His
+war poems and letters appear in a volume entitled _Marlborough and other
+Poems_, published by the Cambridge University Press.
+
+STEWART, J.E. He is a Captain in the Eighth Border Regiment, British
+Expeditionary Force. He was awarded the Military Cross in 1916.
+
+TENNANT, EDWARD WYNDHAM. He was the son of Baron Glenconner, and was at
+Winchester when war was declared. He was only seventeen when he joined
+the Grenadier Guards, Twenty-first Battalion. He had one year's training
+in England, saw one year's active service in France, and fell, gallantly
+fighting, in the battle of the Somme, 1916.
+
+TYNAN, KATHARINE. Pen-name of Mrs. Katharine Tynan Hinkson, whose war
+writings include _The Flower of Peace_, _The Holy War_, etc.
+
+VAN DYKE, HENRY. He has been Professor of English Literature in
+Princeton University since 1900, and was United States Minister to the
+Netherlands and Luxembourg from June, 1913, to December, 1916. He has
+published several war poems. He is the first American to receive an
+honorary degree at Oxford since the United States entered the war. The
+degree of Doctor of Civil Law was conferred upon him on May 8, 1917.
+
+VERNÈDE, ROBERT ERNEST. He was educated at St. Paul's School and at St.
+John's College, Oxford. On leaving college he became a professional
+writer, producing several novels and two books of travel sketches, one
+dealing with India, the other with Canada. He was also author of a
+number of poems. At the outbreak of the war he enlisted in the
+Nineteenth Royal Fusiliers, known as the Public Schools Battalion, and
+received a commission as Second Lieutenant in the Rifle Brigade, in May,
+1915. He went to France in November, 1915, and was wounded during the
+battle of the Somme in September of the following year, but returned to
+the front in December. He died of wounds on April 9, 1917, in his
+forty-second year.
+
+WATERHOUSE, GILBERT. Lieutenant in the Second Essex Regiment. His war
+writings include _Railhead, and other Poems_. He is reported "missing."
+
+WHARTON, EDITH. She has written _Fighting France_, etc.
+
+
+
+INDEX OF FIRST LINES
+
+
+A bowl of daffodils
+A league and a league from the trenches--from the traversed maze of the
+  lines
+A song of hate is a song of Hell
+A sudden swirl of song in the bright sky
+A wind in the world! The dark departs
+A wingèd death has smitten dumb thy bells
+All that a man might ask thou hast given me, England
+All the hills and vales along
+Alone amid the battle-din untouched
+Ambassador of Christ you go
+Around no fire the soldiers sleep to-night
+As I lay in the trenches
+As when the shadow of the sun's eclipse
+At last there'll dawn the last of the long year
+Awake, ye nations, slumbering supine
+
+Because for once the sword broke in her hand
+Before I knew, the Dawn was on the road
+Beneath fair Magdalen's storied towers
+Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead
+Broken, bewildered by the long retreat
+Brothers in blood! They who this wrong began
+Burned from the ore's rejected dross
+By all the deeds to Thy dear glory done
+By all the glories of the day
+By day, by night, along the lines their dull boom rings
+
+Champion of human honour, let us lave
+Come, Death, I'd have a word with thee
+Courage came to you with your boyhood's grace
+
+Dark, dark lay the drifters, against the red west
+Dawn off the Foreland--the young flood making
+Dear son of mine, the baby days are over
+Dreary lay the long road, dreary lay the town
+
+Endless lanes sunken in the clay
+England, in this great fight to which you go
+England! where the sacred flame
+
+Facing the guns, he jokes as well
+Far fall the day when England's realm shall see
+For all we have and are
+Franceline rose in the dawning gray
+From morn to midnight, all day through
+Further and further we leave the scene
+
+Give us a name to fill the mind
+Great names of thy great captains gone before
+Green gardens in Laventie
+Guns of Verdun point to Metz
+
+He said: Thou petty people, let me pass
+Hearken, the feet of the Destroyer tread
+Here is his little cambric frock
+Here lies a clerk who half his life had spent
+Here, where we stood together, we three men
+
+I cannot quite remember.... There were five
+I feel the spring far off, far off
+I have a rendezvous with Death
+I heard the rumbling guns, I saw the smoke
+I know a beach road
+I never knew you save as all men know
+I pray for peace; yet peace is but a prayer
+I saw her first abreast the Boston Light
+I saw the spires of Oxford
+I see across the chasm of flying years
+I was out early to-day, spying about
+I went upon a journey
+I will die cheering, if I needs must die
+If I should die, think only this of me
+In a vision of the night I saw them
+In lonely watches night by night
+In the face of death, they say, he joked--he had no fear
+In the glad revels, in the happy fêtes
+It is portentous, and a thing of state
+It was silent in the street
+
+Land of the desolate, Mother of tears
+Land of the Martyrs--of the martyred dead
+Led by Wilhelm, as you tell
+Lest the young soldiers be strange in heaven
+Low and brown barns, thatched and repatched and tattered
+
+Men of my blood, you English men!
+Men of the Twenty-first
+Moon, slow rising, over the trembling sea-rim
+Mother and child! Though the dividing sea
+My leg? It's off at the knee
+My name is Darino, the poet. You have heard? _Oui, Comédie Française_
+
+Nay, nay, sweet England, do not grieve
+Near where the royal victims fell
+No Man's Land is an eerie sight
+No more old England will they see
+Not long did we lie on the torn, red field of pain
+Not since Wren's Dome has whispered with man's prayer
+Not with her ruined silver spires
+Now is the midnight of the nations: dark
+Now lamp-lit gardens in the blue dusk shine
+Now slowly sinks the day-long labouring sun
+Now spake the Emperor to all his shining battle forces
+
+O gracious ones, we bless your name
+O living pictures of the dead
+O race that Caesar knew
+Of all my dreams by night and day
+Often I think of you, Jimmy Doane
+Oh, down by the Millwall Basin as I went the other day
+Oh, red is the English rose
+Oh! yon hills are filled with sunlight, and the green leaves paled to
+  gold
+Our little hour,--how swift it flies
+Out where the line of battle cleaves
+Over the twilight field
+
+_Qui vive?_ Who passes by up there?
+Quiet thou didst stand at thine appointed place
+
+Robbed mother of the stricken Motherland
+
+Saints have adored the lofty soul of you
+See you that stretch of shell-torn mud spotted with pools of mire
+Shadow by shadow, stripped for fight
+She came not into the Presence as a martyred saint might come
+She was binding the wounds of her enemies when they came
+Shyly expectant, gazing up at Her
+Sometimes I fly at dawn above the sea
+
+The battery grides and jingles
+The falling rain is music overhead
+The first to climb the parapet
+The horror-haunted Belgian plains riven by shot and shell
+The naked earth is warm with Spring
+The road that runs up to Messines
+The starshells float above, the bayonets glisten
+There are five men in the moonlight
+There is a hill in England
+There is wild water from the north
+They had hot scent across the spumy sea
+They sent him back to her. The letter came
+This is my faith, and my mind's heritage
+This is the ballad of Langemarck
+This was the gleam then that lured from far
+Those who have stood for thy cause when the dark was around thee
+Thou warden of the western gate, above Manhattan Bay
+Thou, whose deep ways are in the sea
+Three hundred thousand men, but not enough
+To the Judge of Right and Wrong
+'T was in the piping time of peace
+
+Under our curtain of fire
+Under the tow-path past the barges
+Unflinching hero, watchful to foresee
+
+Was there love once? I have forgotten her
+We are here in a wood of little beeches
+We challenged Death. He threw with weighted dice
+We may not know how fared your soul before
+We willed it not. We have not lived in hate
+What have I given
+What is the gift we have given thee, Sister?
+What of the faith and fire within us
+What was it kept you so long, brave German submersible?
+When battles were fought
+When consciousness came back, he found he lay
+When first I saw you in the curious street
+When the fire sinks in the grate, and night has bent
+When there is Peace our land no more
+Whence not unmoved I see the nations form
+Wherever war, with its red woes
+With arrows on their quarters and with numbers on their hoofs
+With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children
+
+Ye sleepers, who will sing you
+You dare to say with perjured lips
+You have become a forge of snow-white fire
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Treasury of War Poetry
+by Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A TREASURY OF WAR POETRY ***
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