I like to think it did not fall to earth,
A wounded bird that trails a broken wing,
But to the heavenly blue that gave it birth,
Faded in silence, a mysterious thing,
Cleaving its radiant course where honour lies
Like a winged victory mounting to the skies.
The clouds received it, and the pathless night;
Swift as a flame, its eager force unspent,
We saw no limit to its daring flight;
Only its pilot knew the way it went,
And how it pierced the maze of flickering stars
Straight to its goal in the red planet Mars.
So to the entrance of that fiery gate,
Borne by no current, driven by no breeze,
Knowing no guide but some compelling fate,
Bold navigators of uncharted seas,
Courage and youth went proudly sweeping by,
To win the unchallenged freedom of the sky.
Parliament has been occupied with many matters, from the Report of the
Dardanelles Commission to the grievances of Scots bee-keepers. The woes of
Ireland have not been forgotten, and the Nationalists have been busily
engaged in getting Home Rule out of cold storage. Hitherto every attempt of
the British Sisyphus to roll the Stone of Destiny up the Hill of Tara has
found a couple of Irishmen at the top ready to roll it down again. Let us
hope that this time they will co-operate to install it there as the throne
of a loyal and united Ireland. Believers in the "Hidden Hand" have been on
the war-path, and as a result of prolonged discussion as to the
responsibility for the failure of the effort to force the Dardanelles, the
House is evidently of opinion that Lord Fisher might now be let alone by
foes and friends. The idea of blaming _Queen Elisabeth_ for the fiasco
is so entirely satisfactory to all parties concerned that one wonders why
the Commission couldn't have thought of that itself.
[Illustration: THE INFECTIOUS HORNPIPE]
Mr. Bernard Shaw, returned from his "joy-ride" at the Front, has declared
that "there is no monument more enduring than brass"; the general feeling,
however, is that there is a kind of brass that is beyond enduring.
Armageddon is justified since it has given him a perfectly glorious time.
He is obliged, in honesty, to state that the style of some of the buildings
wrecked by the Germans was quite second rate. He entered and emerged from
the battle zone without any vulgar emotion; remaining immune from pity,
sorrow, or tears. In short:
He went through the fiery furnace, but never a hair was missed
From the heels of our most colossal Arch-Super-Egotist.
According to the latest news from Sofia, 35,000 Bulgarian geese are to be
allowed to go to Germany. As in the case of the Bulgarian Fox who went to
Vienna, there appears to be little likelihood that they will ever return.
[Illustration: FOOD RESTRICTION