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.