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.