George Herbert Clarke

“ HOW should we praise those lads of the old Vindictive
⁠Who looked Death straight in the eyes,
⁠⁠Till his gaze fell,
⁠⁠In those red gates of hell?
England, in her proud history, proudly enrolls them,
⁠And the deep night in her remembering skies
⁠⁠With purer glory
⁠⁠Shall blazon their grim story.
There were no throngs to applaud that hushed adventure.
⁠They were one to a thousand on that fierce emprise.
⁠⁠The shores they sought
⁠⁠Were armoured, past all thought.
Oh, they knew fear, be assured, as the brave must know it,
⁠With youth and its happiness bidding their last goodbyes ”

“ Open our eyes to see beneath
⁠Each honest foe a friend.
Give us to fight with banners bright
⁠And flaming swords of faith;
We pray Thee to maintain Thy right
⁠In face of hell and death.
Smile Thou upon our arms, and bless
⁠Our colours in the field,
Add Thou, to righteous aims, success
⁠With peace and mercy seal'd.
Father and Lord of friend and foe
⁠All-seeing and all-wise,
Thy balm to dying hearts bestow,
⁠Thy sight to sightless eyes;
To the dear dead give life, where pain
⁠And death no more dismay,
Where, amid Love's long terrorless Reign,
⁠All tears are wiped away. ”

“ CHAPLAIN TO THE FORCES
["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 go
Up 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. ”

“ The bright lads, the right lads, I have them in my mind,
With the green flags on their bayonets all fluttering in the wind!
A last look at old Ireland, a last good-bye maybe,
Then the gray sea, the wide sea, my grief upon the sea!
And when will they come home, says I, when will they see once more
The dear blue hills of Wicklow and Wexford's dim gray shore?
The brave lads of Ireland, no better lads you'll find,
With the green flags on their bayonets all fluttering in the wind! ”

“ DEAR! of all happy in the hour, most blest
⁠He who has found our hid security,
Assured in the dark tides of the world that rest,
⁠And heard our word, "Who is so safe as we?"
We have found safety with all things undying,
⁠The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth,
The deep night, and birds singing, and clouds flying,
⁠And sleep, and freedom, and the autumnal earth.
We have built a house that is not for Time's throwing.
⁠We have gained a peace unshaken by pain for ever.
War knows no power. ”

“ Night on the black North Sea!—
Black as hell's darkest hollow.
Peering anxiously,
We search for the ships that follow.
One are the sea and sky,
Dim are the figures near us,
With only the sea-bird's cry
And the swish of the waves to cheer us.
Death on the wild North Sea!—
Death from the shell that shatters
(Death we will face with glee,
'Tis the weary wait that matters) :—
Death from the guns that roar,
And the splinters weirdly shrieking.
'Tis fight to the death; 'tis war;
And the North Sea is redly reeking! ”

“ THE CHALLENGE OF THE GUNS
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 heart
The sad-eyed watching mother sees her sons depart.
And freighted full the tumbling waters of ocean are
With 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. ”

“ The great guns of England, they listen mile on mile
To the boasts of a broken War-Lord; they lift their throats and smile;
⁠But the old woods are fallen
⁠⁠For a while.
The old woods are fallen; yet will they come again,
They will come back some springtime with the warm winds and the rain,
⁠For Nature guardeth her children
⁠⁠Never in vain.
They will come back some season; it may be a hundred years;
It is all one to Nature with the centuries that are hers;
⁠She shall bring back her children
⁠⁠And dry all their tears. ”

“ And over the study and lecture-room and the river and meadow falls
⁠A stern peace, a strange peace, a peace that War has made.
For many a youthful shoulder now is gay with an epaulet,
⁠And the hand that was deft with a cricket-bat is defter with a sword,
And some of the lads will laugh to-day where the trench is red and wet,
⁠And some will win on the bloody field the accolade of the Lord.
They have taken their youth and mirth away from the study and playing-ground
⁠To a new school in an alien land beneath an alien sky ”

“ Gird on me a sword!
If death be dearest comrade proven,
If life be coward's mate,
If Nazareth of dreams be woven—
Give me fighter's fate! ........ If God be thrilled by a battle cry,
If He can bless the moaning fight,
If when the trampling charge goes by
God himself is the leading Knight;
If God laughs when the gun thunders,
If He yells when the bullet sings—
Then my stoic soul but wonders
How great God can do such things! ........ ”

“ In the world's dim heart, where the waiting spirits slumber,
Sounded a roar when the walls were rent asunder
That parted Earth from Hell, and summoning them away,
Tremendous trumpets blew, as at the Judgment Day—
And the dead came forth, each to his former banner.
On the grim field of Flanders, the old battle-plain,
Their armies held the iron line round Ypres in the rain,
From Bixschoote to Baecelaere and down to the Lys river. ”

“ Except the cause for which a people strives
Burn with no covetous, foul heat.
Fights she against herself who infamously draws
The sword against man's secret spiritual laws.
But thou, England, because a bitter heel
Hath sought to bruise the brain, the sensitive will,
The conscience of the world,
For this, England, art risen, and shalt fight
Purely through long profoundest night,
Making their quarrel thine who are grieved like thee;
And (if to thee the stars yield victory)
Tempering their hate of the great foe that hurled
Vainly her strength against the conscience of the world. ”

“ The Breton to the Norman spoke, like a little child spake he,
But his sea-blue eyes were empty as his home beside the sea:
"There are more windows in one house than there are eyes to see;
There are more doors in a man's house, but God has hid the key;
Ruin is a builder of windows; her legend witnesseth
Barbara, the saint of gunners, and a stay in sudden death." ”

“ ANOTHER land has crashed into the deep,
⁠The heir and namesake of that Rome, whose laws
⁠Spread the great peace.—Grey Power, that yet o'erawes
The thoughts of men, first to bid nations keep
The bounds of right, and earth's wild borders steep,
⁠O, from thy pinnacle 'mid time's applause
⁠Salute, great Rome, the victim of man's cause,
Thy child, Roumania!—Nay, not ours to weep.
O Latin Race! how doth our debt increase
⁠At every flash of thy unfathomed soul,
Long on the rock of justice founding peace,
⁠While ever round thee new-born ages roll! ”

“ You will not sleep beneath a mound where kings
Were coffin'd long ago in carven stone
And dream in peace amid an emerald land
Of many memories and swift-wing'd song.
And yet I think that you are not forgotten;
For even in the Irish air there will be
Somewhat of you; in the wide beam of sunlight
Streaming athwart the mountains to the fields
Furrowed and brown, where languid rooks, and gulls
With their sharp crying, circle, or sit and sun
Themselves. The song of birds shall speak of you;
The blackbird chirping cheerily of spring,
When hawthorn blows and gorse runs through the hedge ”

“ Cleared of the wingèd nightmares, and the breast
Freed of the heavy dreams of hearts afar.
We rose at last under the morning star.
We rose, and greeted our brothers, and welcomed our foes.
We rose; like the wheat when the wind is over, we rose.
With shouts we rose, with gasps and incredulous cries,
With bursts of singing, and silence, and awestruck eyes,
With broken laughter, half tears, we rose from the sod,
With welling tears and with glad lips, whispering, "God."
Like babes, refreshed from sleep, like children, we rose,
Brimming with deep content, from our dreamless repose. ”

“ Yet shall your names ring on in England's story,
⁠You who were the prophets of the mighty years to be,
Drake, Blake and Nelson, thundering down the ages,
⁠Captains adventurous, the Masters of the Sea.
Norah M. Holland
NORTH SEA
DAWN on the drab North Sea!—
Colourless, cold, and depressing,
With the sun that we long to see
Refraining from his blessing.
To the westward—sombre as doom:
To the eastward—grey and foreboding:
Comes a low, vibrating boom—
The sound of a mine exploding.
Day on the drear North Sea!—
Wearisome, drab, and relentless.
The low clouds swiftly flee ”

“ When all the slaves took up their tools for the bidding of Barbara;
She smote the bare wall with her hand, and bade them smite again,
She poured them wealth of wine and meat to stay them in their pain,
And cried through the lifted thunder of thronging hammer and hod:
'Throw open the third window in the third name of God!'
Then the hearts failed and the tools fell; and far towards the foam
Men saw a shadow on the sands; and her father coming home."
⁠Speak low and low, along the line the whispered word is flying,
⁠⁠Before the touch, before the time, we may not lose a breath. ”

“ In each prairie, running free
O'er some long fast-frozen sea,
In each jungle, fierce and lush
From its glutting thunder-gush,
In each mammoth mountain-side,
Thrust from a womb of earth in pride,
Climbing till creation dies
From its crude, star-stricken eyes—
Yea, and in all eyes that see
That frustrate immensity,
And the larger life that wings
In the least of creeping things;
In the swift invisible rain
Poured into the human brain,
In all gods that men made first
When earth's glories on them burst,
Gods of serpents, stars, and trees,
And the gods that fashioned these ”

“ All across the bitter seas duty comes a-callin'
⁠In the Winter's weather off the North Sea ground.
It's well we've learned to laugh at fear—the sea has taught us how;
It's well we've shaken hands with death—we'll not be strangers now,
With death in every climbin' wave before the trawler's bow,
⁠An' the black spawn swimmin' on the North Sea ground.
Good luck to all our fightin' ships that rule the English sea;
Good luck to our brave merchantmen wherever they may be;
The sea it is their highway, an' we've got to sweep it free
⁠For the ships passin' over the North Sea ground. ”

“ THOU art the world's desired, the golden fleece
⁠Of Time's adventurers faring down to Hell,
But Helen's self dwelt not so far from peace
⁠Nor so beset since lofty Ilium fell.
Tyrants would pluck thee as men pluck a rose,
⁠Carthage and Greece, the Vandal and the Goth:
Now more are added to thy many foes
⁠From East and West, ay, thou hast suffered both.
Greece was enslaved, and Carthage is but dust,
⁠But thou art living, maugre all thy scars,
To bear fresh wounds of rapine and of lust,
⁠Immortal victim of unnumbered wars. ”

“ A mound of rag-bags grey 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. ”

“ Lectures and the voices of the dons deep-droning,
The things that were so common once—O God, I feel them all.
Here there are the great things, life and death and danger,
All I ever dreamed of in the days that used to be,
Comrades and good-fellowship, the soul of an army,
But, oh, it is the little things that take the heart of me.
For all we knew of old, for little things and lovely,
We bow us to the greater life beyond our hope or fear,
To bear its heavy burdens, endure its toil unheeding,
Because of all the little things so distant and so dear. ”

“ GOD, I am travelling out to death's sea,
⁠I, who exulted in sunshine and laughter,
Thought not of dying death—is such waste of me!
⁠Grant me one comfort: Leave not the hereafter
Of mankind to war, as though I had died not—
⁠I, who in battle, my comrade's arm linking,
Shouted and sang—life in my pulses hot
⁠Throbbing and dancing! Let not my sinking
In dark be for naught, my death a vain thing! ”