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