From morn to midnight, all day through,I laugh and play as others do,I sin and chatter, just the sameAs others with a different name.
And all year long upon the stage,I dance and tumble and do rageSo vehemently, I scarcely seeThe inner and eternal me.
I have a temple I do notVisit, a heart I have forgot,A self that I have never met,A secret shrine—and yet, and yet
This sanctuary of my soulUnwitting I keep white and whole,Unlatched and lit, if Thou should'st careTo enter or to tarry there.
With parted lips and outstretched handsAnd listening ears Thy servant stands,Call Thou early, call Thou late,To Thy great service dedicate.
Charles Hamilton Sorley
May, 1915
Here lies a clerk who half his life had spentToiling at ledgers in a city grey,Thinking that so his days would drift awayWith no lance broken in life's tournament:Yet ever 'twixt the books and his bright eyesThe 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 contentWith 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
The naked earth is warm with Spring,And with green grass and bursting treesLeans 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 sunTake 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 HeavenHold 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 takesHim by the throat, and makes him blind,
Through joy and blindness he shall know,Not caring much to know, that stillNor lead nor steel shall reach him, soThat 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 first to climb the parapetWith "cricket balls" in either hand;The first to vanish in the smokeOf 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 throwWith all that nicety of aimThey 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 eyeAs true as though itwerea gameAnd friends were having tea close by.
Pull down some art-offending thingOf carven stone, and in its steadLet splendid bronze commemorateThese men, the living and the dead.No figure of heroic size,Towering skyward like a god;But just a lad who might have steppedFrom 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 tellOf those weird battles in the WestWherein he put old skill to use,And played old games with sterner zest.
Thus should he stand, reminding thoseIn less-believing days, perchance,How Britain's fighting cricketersHelped 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 alongEarth is bursting into song,And the singers are the chapsWho 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 BarabbasWere 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 storeAll the gladness that you pour.
Earth that never doubts nor fears,Earth that knows of death, not tears,Earth that bore with joyful easeHemlock for Socrates,Earth that blossomed and was glad'Neath the cross that Christ had,Shall rejoice and blossom tooWhen the bullet reaches you.Wherefore, men marchingOn 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 songRinging all the road along.All the music of their going,Ringing, swinging, glad song-throwing,Earth will echo still, when footLies numb and voice mute.On, marching men, onTo 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 is an eerie sightAt early dawn in the pale gray light.Never a house and never a hedgeIn No Man's Land from edge to edge,And never a living soul walks thereTo 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 runFrom the eastern hills to the western sea,Through field or forest o'er river and lea;No man may pass them, but aim you wellAnd Death rides across on the bullet or shell.
But No Man's Land is a goblin sightWhen patrols crawl over at dead o' night;Bocheor 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 headWith your face on the breast of the four months'dead.
The man who ranges in No Man's LandIs dogged by the shadows on either handWhen 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-snatchMay 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
In the glad revels, in the happy fêtes,When cheeks are flushed, and glasses gilt and pearledWith the sweet wine of France that concentratesThe sunshine and the beauty of the world,
Drink sometimes, you whose footsteps yet may treadThe 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'AlgerAnd up the bloody slopes of La Pompelle,
And round the city whose cathedral towersThe enemies of Beauty dared profane,And in the mat of multicolored flowersThat clothe the sunny chalk-fields of Champagne,
Under the little crosses where they riseThe soldier rests. Now round him undismayedThe cannon thunders, and at night he liesAt 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 paidThan undishonored that his flag might floatOver the towers of liberty, he madeHis 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 harvestingShall lightly tread and load their wicker trays,Blessing his memory as they toil and singIn the slant sunshine of October days….
I love to think that if my blood should beSo 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 fillGlow radiant with laughter and good cheer,In beaming cups some spark of me shall stillBrim toward the lips that once I held so dear.
So shall one coveting no higher planeThan nature clothes in color and flesh and tone,Even from the grave put upward to attainThe dreams youth cherished and missed and might have known;
And that strong need that strove unsatisfiedToward earthly beauty in all forms it wore,Not death itself shall utterly divideFrom the beloved shapes it thirsted for.
Alas, how many an adept for whose armsLife 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 hoursTurned their last thoughts and closed their dying eyes,
Rather when music on bright gatherings laysIts tender spell, and joy is uppermost,Be mindful of the men they were, and raiseYour 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
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—crossroadand mound and wire,Loophole, redoubt, and emplacement—lie the targetstheir mouths desire;Gay with purples and browns and blues, have wetraced them their arcs of fire.
And ever the type-keys chatter; and ever our keenwires bringWord from the watchers a-crouch below, word fromthe watchers a-wing:And ever we hear the distant growl of our hid 'gunsthundering.
Hear it hardly, and turn again to our maps, where thetrench lines crawl,Red on the gray and each with a sign for the rangingshrapnel's fall—Snakes that our masters shall scotch at dawn, as iswritten here on the wall.
For the weeks of our waiting draw to a close….There is scarcely a leaf astirIn the garden beyond my windows, where the twilightshadows blurThe blaze of some woman's roses…. "Bombardmentorders, sir."
Gilbert Frankau
Green gardens in Laventie!Soldiers only know the streetWhere the mud is churned and splashed aboutBy 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 spireSeems balanced on a strandOf 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 gravelWas overgrown with celandine;No other folk did travelAlong its weedy surface but the nimble-footed mouse,Running from house to house.
So all along the tender bladesOf soft and vivid grassWe lay, nor heard the limber wheelsThat pass and ever passIn noisy continuity until their stony rattleSeems in itself a battle.
At length we rose up from this easeOf tranquil happy mind,And searched the garden's little lengthSome new pleasaunce to find;And there some yellow daffodils, and jasmine hanging high,Did rest the tired eye.
The fairest and most fragrantOf the many sweets we foundWas a little bush of Daphne flowerUpon 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 dancingIn that lovely little place,Dancing with a measured step from wrecked and shattered townsAway … upon the Downs.
I saw green banks of daffodil,Slim poplars in the breeze,Great tan-brown hares in gusty MarchA-courting on the leas.And meadows, with their glittering streams—and silver-scurrying dace—Home, what a perfect place!
E. Wyndham Tennant
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 soundingAnd wider than all seas:A heart to front the world and find God in it.Eyes blind enow but not too blind to seeThe lovely things behind the dross and darkness,And lovelier things to be;And friends whose loyalty time nor death shall weakenAnd 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
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 stirMore 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 deathTo shatter limbs! Pulp, tear, blastBelovèd soldiers who love rough life and breathNot 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 battery grides and jingles,Mile succeeds to mile;Shaking the noonday sunshineThe guns lunge out awhile,And then are still awhile.
We amble along the highway;The reeking, powdery dustAscends and cakes our facesWith a striped, sweaty crust.
Under the still sky's violetThe heat throbs on the air….The white road's dusty radianceAssumes a dark glare.
With a head hot and heavy,And eyes that cannot rest,And a black heart burningIn a stifled breast,
I sit in the saddle,I feel the road unroll,And keep my senses straightenedToward to-morrow's goal.
There, over unknown meadowsWhich we must reach at last,Day and night thundersA black and chilly blast.
Heads forget heaviness,Hearts forget spleen,For by that mighty winnowingBeing 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 againAfter grief and shame,And along the wind of deathThrows a clean flame.
* * * * *
The battery grides and jingles,Mile succeeds to mile;Suddenly battering the silenceThe guns burst out awhile….
I lift my head and smile.
Robert Nichols
We are here in a wood of little beeches:And the leaves are like black laceAgainst a sky of nacre.
One bough of clear promiseAcross 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 handsToward 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 promiseAcross the moon.
Frederic Manning
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 belowA dusty and flickering light from one feeble candleAnd 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 sentrySilent and motionless, watching while two sleep,And he sees before himWith indifferent eyes the blasted and torn landPeopled 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 burntWith the lust of a man's first strength: ere they were rent.Almost at unawares, savagely; and strewnIn bloody fragments, to be the carrionOf rats and crows.
And the sentry moves not, searchingNight for menace with weary eyes.
Frederic Manning
I see across the chasm of flying yearsThe pyre of Dido on the vacant shore;I see Medea's fury and hear the roarOf rushing flames, the new bride's burning tears;And ever as still another vision peersThro' memory's mist to stir me more and more,I say that surely I have lived beforeAnd 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 cryOf stricken women the warrior's call above,That I would gladly lay me down and dieTo wake again where Helen and Hector move.
The falling rain is music overhead,The dark night, lit by no Intruding star,Fit covering yields to thoughts that roam afarAnd turn again familiar paths to tread,Where many a laden hour too quickly spedIn happier times, before the dawn of war,Before the spoiler had whet his sword to marThe 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 sweepAcross 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 road that runs up to MessinesIs double-locked with gates of fire,Barred with high ramparts, and betweenThe 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.
Choked with wild weeds, and overgrownWith rank grass, all torn and rentBy war's opposing engines, strewnWith débris from each day's event!
And in the dark the broken trees,Whose arching boughs were once its shade,Grim and distorted, ghostly easeIn 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 martAnd 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 dayWhispered 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.
The road that runs up to Messines!Ah, how we guard it day and night!And how they guard it, who o'erweenA stricken people, with their might!
But we shall go up to MessinesEven thro' that fire-defended gate.Over and thro' all else betweenAnd give the highway back its state.
J. E. Stewart
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 heartThe sad-eyed watching mother sees her sons depart.
And freighted full the tumbling waters of ocean areWith 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
I know a beach road,A road where I would go,It runs up northwardFrom Cooden Bay to Hoe;And there, in the High Woods,Daffodils grow.
And whoever walks along thereStops short and sees,By the moist tree-rootsIn 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 trumpetsAnd they shake their glancing spears.
And all the rocking beech-treesAre bright with buds again,And the green and open spacesAre greener after rain,And far to southward one can hearThe sullen, moaning rain.
Once before I dieI will leave the town behind,The loud town, the dark townThat cramps and chills the mind,And I'll stand again bareheaded thereIn the sunlight and the wind.
Yes, I shall standWhere as a boy I stoodAbove the dykes and levelsIn the beach road by the wood,And I'll smell again the sea breeze,Salt and harsh and good.
And there shall rise to meFrom that consecrated groundThe old dreams, the lost dreamsThat years and cares have drowned;Welling up within meAnd above me and aroundThe song that I could never singAnd the face I never found.
Geoffrey Howard
When first I saw you in the curious streetLike 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 greetMy 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
Our little hour,—how swift it fliesWhen poppies flare and lilies smile;How soon the fleeting minute dies,Leaving us but a little whileTo 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 isWhen Love with dew-eyed lovelinessRaises her lips for ours to kissAnd dies within our first caress.Youth flickers out like wind-blown flame,Sweets of to-day to-morrow sour,For Time and Death, relentless, claimOur little hour.
Our little hour,—how short a tuneTo 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 spedOur 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 hymnOur little hour.
Leslie Coulson
By all the glories of the day,And the cool evening's benison:By the last sunset touch that layUpon 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 storedWith high endeavour that was his,By all his mad catastrophes,Make me a man, O Lord.
I, that on my familiar hillSaw with uncomprehending eyesA hundred of Thy sunsets spillTheir fresh and sanguine sacrifice,Ere the sun swings his noonday swordMust 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")
Alone amid the battle-din untouchedStands out one figure beautiful, serene;No grime of smoke nor reeking blood hath smutchedThe virgin brow of this unconquered queen.She is the Joy of Courage vanquishingThe 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 flameShall 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
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 startedWith 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 SpringWill come, though death and ruin hold the land,Though storms may roar they may not break the wingOf 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
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 shieldThem from the northern winds. Ere comes the lightOf 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 transcendThe deeds of heroes dead; then dreams o'ertakeHis tired-out brain, and lofty fancies blendTo one grand theme, and through all barriers breakTo guard from hurt his faithful sleeping friend.
Sydney Oswald
See you that stretch of shell-torn mud spotted withpools of mire,Crossed by a burst abandoned trench and torturedstrands of wire,Where splintered pickets reel and sag and leproustrench-rats play,That scour the Devil's hunting-ground to seek theircarrion prey?That is the field my father loved, the field that oncewas mine,The land I nursed for my child's child as my fathersdid long syne.
See there a mound of powdered stones, all flattened,smashed, and torn,Gone black with damp and green with slime?—Ereyou and I were bornMy father's father built a house, a little house andbare,And there I brought my woman home—that heap ofrubble there!The soil of France! Fat fields and green that bred myblood and bone!Each wound that scars my bosom's pride burns deeperthan 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
Quiet thou didst stand at thine appointed place,There was no press to purchase—younger graceAttracts the youth of valour. Thou didst not know,Like the old, kindly Martha, to and froTo haste. Yet one could say, "In thine I prizeThe strength of calm that held in Mary's eyes."And when they came, thy gracious smile so wroughtThey knew that they were given, not that they bought.Thou didst not tempt to vauntings, and pretenceWas dumb before thy perfect woman's sense.Blest who have seen, for they shall ever seeThe radiance of thy benignity.
Alexander Robertson
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 fillsWith pleasure infinite,And all the feathered wings of restSeem flocking from the radiant WestTo bear me thro' the night.
See, how they close me in.They, and the sisters' arms.One eye is closed, the other lidIs watching how my spirit slidToward some red-roofed farms,And having crept beneath them sleptSecure from war's alarms.
Gilbert Waterhouse
Oh! yon hills are filled with sunlight, and the greenleaves paled to gold,And the smoking mists of Autumn hanging faintlyo'er the wold;I dream of hills of other days whose sides I loved toroamWhen Spring was dancing through the lanes of thosedistant hills of home.
The winds of heaven gathered there as pure and coldas dew;Wood-sorrel and wild violets along the hedgerowsgrew,The blossom on the pear-trees was as white as flakesof foamIn the orchard 'neath the shadow of those distanthills of home.
The first white frost in the meadow will be shiningthere to-dayAnd the furrowed upland glinting warm beside thewoodland way;There, a bright face and a clear hearth will be waitingwhen I come,And my heart is throbbing wildly for those distanthills of home.
Malcolm Hemphrey
Wherever war, with its red woes,Or flood, or fire, or famine goes,There, too, go I;If earth in any quarter quakesOr 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 bendO'er Fritz and Pierre and Jack to mendWhat shells have torn.
I go wherever men may dare,I go wherever woman's careAnd love can live,Wherever strength and skill can bringSurcease to human suffering,Or solace give.
I helped upon Haldora's shore;With Hospitaller Knights I boreThe first red cross;I was the Lady of the Lamp;I saw in Solferino's campThe crimson loss.
I am your pennies and your pounds;I am your bodies on their roundsOf pain afar:I amyou, doing what you wouldIf 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 signOf what you'd sacrifice for himWho suffers on the hellish rimOf war's red line.
John Finley
["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 goUp 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 deathSpeed the brave soul whose failing breathShudders 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 lossStill floats the ensign of His Cross.
Winifred M. Letts
O gracious ones, we bless your nameUpon our bended knee;The voice of love with tongue of flameRecords 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 deedsThe conqueror shall take,Sowing sublime and fruitful seedsOfaidosin 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 singThe radiant Cross of Red;Sons of a morning to be born shall singThe radiant Cross of Red.
Eden Phillpotts
In a vision of the night I saw them,In the battles of the night.'Mid the roar and the reeling shadows of bloodThey were moving like light,
Light of the reason, guardedTense within the will,As a lantern under a tossing of boughsBurns steady and still.
With scrutiny calm, and with fingersPatient as swiftThey bind up the hurts and the pain-writhenBodies uplift,
Untired and defenceless; around themWith shrieks in its breathBursts stark from the terrible horizonImpersonal death;
But they take not their courage from angerThat 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 watcherIn hell, and not swerveFor an hour from the faith that they follow,The light that they serve.
Man true to man, to his kindnessThat overflows all,To his spirit erect in the thunderWhen 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
Out where the line of battle cleavesThe horizon of woeAnd sightless warriors clutch the leavesThe Red Cross nurses go.In where the cots of agonyMark death's unmeasured tide—Bear up the battle's harvestry—The Red Cross nurses glide.
Look! Where the hell of steel has tornIts way through slumbering earthThe orphaned urchins kneel forlornAnd wonder at their birth.Until, above them, calm and wiseWith smile and guiding hand,God looking through their gentle eyes,The Red Cross nurses stand.
Thomas L. Masson
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 restWhenKilmenywent 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 ereKilmenycame home,And nobody knew whereKilmenyhad 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 whereKilmenyhad been.
It was dark whenKilmenycame 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 eveningKilmenycame home,And nobody knew whereKilmenyhad 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 eveningKilmenycame home,And nobody knew whereKilmenyhad been.
Alfred Noyes
Dawn off the Foreland—the young flood makingJumbled 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 upUnity,Claribel,Assyrian,Stormcock, andGoldenGain."
Noon off the Foreland—the first ebb makingLumpy and strong in the bight.Boom after boom, and the golf-hut shakingAnd the jackdaws wild with fright."Mines located in the fairway,Boats now working up the chain,Sweepers—Unity,Claribel,Assyrian,Stormcock, andGoldenGain."
Dusk off the Foreland—the last light goingAnd the traffic crowding through,And five damned trawlers with their syreens blowingHeading the whole review!"Sweep completed in the fairway.No more mines remain.Sent backUnity,Claribel,Assyrian,Stormcock, andGoldenGain."
Rudyard Kipling_
You dare to say with perjured lips,"We fight to make the ocean free"?You, whose black trail of butchered shipsBestrews the bed of every seaWhere German submarines have wroughtTheir horrors! Have you never thought,—What you call freedom, men call piracy!
Unnumbered ghosts that haunt the waveWhere you have murdered, cry you down;And seamen whom you would not save,Weave now in weed-grown depths a crownOf 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 guardThe gold, and corsairs called to keepO'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 loreThe "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
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 hazeA little fleet of anchored ships, which lieIn 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 faceAs 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 highWhose 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 SaintsWith many a holy thrill—As though the glowing sun were God's bright Throne.
My flight is done. I cross the line of foamThat breaks around a town of grey and red,Whose streets and squares lie deadBeneath the silent dawn—then am I proudThat England's peace to guard I am allowed;Then bow my humble head,In thanks to Him Who brings me safely home.
Paul Bewsher
["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,Gehennaand her sister, swiftShaitan,That in the pack, withGoblin,EblisranAnd 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 vanThat pressed them close. So when the kill beganSome hounds were lamed and some died splendidly.
But from the dusk along the Skagerack,Until dawn loomed upon the Reef of HornAnd 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
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 hiswork!
He's the terror of the fo'c's'le when he heals its various illsWith turpentine and mustard leaves, and poultices and pills….But he knows the sea like the palm of his hand, as a shepherd knows thehills.
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
Courage came to you with your boyhood's graceOf 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 deathWith every breath.
So when you went to play another gameYou 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 goalYou staked your soul.
Yes, you wore courage as you wore your youthWith carelessness and joy.But in what Spartan school of disciplineDid you get patience, boy?How did you learn to bear this long-drawn painAnd not complain?
Restless with throbbing hopes, with thwarted aims,Impulsive as a colt,How do you lie here month by weary monthHelpless, and not revolt?What joy can these monotonous days affordHere 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 dayShould guess the agony.Lest they should suffer—this the only fearYou let draw near.
Greybeard philosophy has sought in booksAnd argument this truth,That man is greater than his pain, but youHave learnt it in your youth.You know the wisdom taught by CalvaryAt twenty-three.
Death would have found you brave, but braver stillYou face each lagging day,A merry Stoic, patient, chivalrous,Divinely kind and gay.You bear your knowledge lightly, graduateOf unkind Fate.
Careless philosopher, the first to laugh,The latest to complain.Unmindful that you teach, you taught me thisIn your long fight with pain:Since God made man so good—here stands my creed—God's good indeed.
Winifred M. Letts