“ And there isn't a tropic island or a bay where the anchors hold
But knows that I fly for Freedom and Honour worth more than gold.
Tens of thousands pay homage, as they raise me with loving hands
And free my soul in the morning to the drums of a hundred bands;
And thousands again salute me as the sun sinks down in the west,
For my Lords have decreed that the sun and I go down together to rest.
I flaunt my head in the breezes that the ice-bound Pole sends forth
As my halliards curse and chatter in the hail-swept frozen North ”

“ I hear no sound but the wind and the rain,
And trample of horses, loud and lost again
Where the wagons in the mist rumble dimly on
Bringing more shell.
⁠The last gleam is gone.
It is not day or night; only the mists unroll
And blind with their sorrow the sight of my soul.
I hear the wind weeping in the hollow overhead:
She goes searching for the forgotten dead
Hidden in the hedges or trodden into muck
Under the trenches or maybe limply stuck
Somewhere in the branches of a high, lonely tree—
He was a sniper once. They never found his body. ”

“ Where a gallant ship may anchor when her fighting days are done,
Free from tempest, rock and battle, toil and tumult safely o'er,
Where the breezes murmur softly and there's peace for evermore.
They have climbed the last horizon, they are standing in from sea,
And the Pilot makes the Haven where a ship is glad to be:
Comes at last the glorious greeting, strangely new and ages old,
See the sober grey is shining like the Tudor green and gold!
⁠And the waiting jibs are hoisted, in the old way,
⁠As the guns begin to thunder down the line ”

“ The burst that hangs to guide us, while numbed gloved fingers tap
From wireless key beside us the circles of the map.
⁠Line—target—short or over—
⁠Come, plain as clock hands run,
⁠Words from the birds that hover,
⁠Unblinded, tail to sun;
⁠Words out of air to range them fair,
⁠From hawks that guide the gun!
Your flying shells have failed you, your landward guns are dumb:
Since earth hath naught availed you, these skies be open! Come,
Where, wild to meet and mate you, flame in their beaks for breath,
Black doves! the white hawks wait you on the wind-tossed boughs of death. ”

“ THE green and grey and purple day is barred with clouds of dun,
From Ypres city smouldering before the setting sun;
Another hour will see it flower, lamentable sight,
A bush of burning roses underneath the night.
Who's to fight for Flanders, who will set them free,
The war-worn lowlands by the English sea?
Who, my young companions, will choose a way to war,
That Marlborough, Wellington, have trodden out before? ”

“ Lone mothers mourning for the sons they bore.
But they were bravely desolate; to speak
⁠Soft words of comfort, hopeful of relief
⁠Seemed but an insult to their quiet grief;
In face of such a sorrow words are weak.
"Yet this, O mothers, take for comforting:
⁠We suffer and not they; the glorious dead
⁠Are now at peace from Hate and Fear," I said;
"That day they died, they vanquished suffering.
"Therefore rejoice with them; for not in vain
⁠They gave the virgin glory of their youth,
⁠That evil should not overcome, that truth
Might not be trampled for a tyrant's gain." ”

“ WHEN as of old the Spartan mother sent
Her best beloved to the perilous field,
One charge she laid upon him ere he went:
"Return, my son, or with or on thy shield."
Even so we, with anguish unrevealed
By eyes o'er-bright and lips to laughter lent,
Sent forth our men to battle, nor would yield
To tears by pride's fierce barriers hardly pent. ”

“ It was good to go to sleep on mother's Birthday,
⁠And to let the tired body take its ease,
And to dream of dreamy, long-forgotten spring days
⁠When a little body lay on mother's knees.
Only every man has not a mother's Birthday,
⁠No one ever had a mother just like mine! ”

“ There's a broad green field in a broad green vale,
⁠There's a bounding ball and a straining pack;
There's a clean cold wind blowing half a gale,
⁠There's a strong defence and a swift attack.
There's a roar from the "touch" like an angry sea,
⁠As the struggle wavers from goal to goal;
But the fight is clean as a fight should be,
⁠And they're friends when the ball has ceased to roll.
Clean and keen is the grand old rule,
⁠And heart and courage must never fail.
They are making men where the grey stone school
⁠Looks out on the broad green vale. ”

“ In fume and fire to sheath us and baulk us of our prey.
⁠Before, beyond, above her,
⁠Their iron web is spun:
⁠Flicked but unsnared we hover,
⁠Edged planes against the sun:
⁠Eyes in the air above his lair,
⁠The hawks that guide the gun!
No word from earth may reach us, save, white against the ground,
The strips outspread to teach us whose ears are deaf to sound:
But down the winds that sear us, athwart our engine's shriek,
We send—and know they hear us, the ranging guns we speak. ”

“ IT is midday; the deep trench glares. . . .
A buzz and blaze of flies. . . .
The hot wind puffs the giddy airs. . . .
The great sun rakes the skies.
No sound in all the stagnant trench
Where forty standing men
Endure the sweat and grit and stench,
Like cattle in a pen.
Sometimes a sniper's bullet whirs
Or twangs the whining wire,
Sometimes a soldier sighs and stirs
As in hell's frying fire.
From out a high, cool cloud descends
An aeroplane's far moan,
The sun strikes down, the thin cloud rends. . . . ”

“ The moon looks down with pale impassioned ray—
Sufficient for the hour is its pain.
Be still and feel the night that hides away earth's stain.
Be still and loose the sense of God in you,
Be still and send your soul into the all,
The vasty distance where the stars shine blue,
No longer antlike on the earth to crawl.
Released from time and sense of great or small,
Float on the pinions of the Night-Queen's wings ”

“ The Jumna, through their tether,
⁠Foams white, or plunges green.
The mountains stand and laugh at Time;
⁠They pillar up the earth,
They watch the ages pass, they bring
⁠New centuries to birth.
They feel the daybreak shiver,
They see Time passing ever
As flows the Jumna River,
⁠As breaks the white sea-surf.
They drink the sun in a golden cup,
⁠And in blue mist the rain;
With a sudden brightening they meet the lightning
⁠Or ere it strikes the plain. ”

“ And there are aged inns that sell the mellow, cool October ale,
What time one tells an oft-told tale around the friendly fires,
Until the clock with muffled chime asserts that it is closing time,
And o'er the fields now white with rime the company retires.
How long ago and far it seems, this peaceful country of our dreams,
Of fruitful fields and purling streams—the England that we know:
Who holds within her sea-girt ring all that we love, and love can bring ”

“ In other forms their beauty—No grief, no rueing
Irrevocable woe. They'll lie, they'll steep
Their hearts in peace unfathomed, till they leap
Quick to the light of the sun, as flowers strewing,
Maybe, their own friends' paths. And that's not all.
When men who knew them walk old ways alone,
The paths they loved together, at even-fall,
Then the sad heart shall know a presence near,
Friendly, familiar, and the old grief gone,
The new keen joy shall make all darkness clear. ”

“ You were a Soldier true and died as one!...
All day the long wind cries, the clouds unroll,
But to the cloud and wind I cry, "Be still!"
What need of comfort has the heroic soul?
What soldier finds a soldier's grave is chill? ”

“ To bless mankind: nor who for creed or king
Chang'd learning's mantle for the arms of war,
Their lives and treasuries surrendering.
Martyrs and saints have dower'd thee: one in Truth,
Old Faith, new Hope, have died to save or mar
The idols of flown ages; for Truth's sun
Shines glad alike upon all enterprise
⁠That in the Father's eyes
Flatters the fledgling soul till the pure heights be won. ”

“ Their tankards up with English ale and the fiddler to scrape a tune,
And talked of Broke and the Shannon's tars and the Battle of First of June.
⁠They danced and they toasted the frigate's crew,
⁠And sang of the guns and the men in blue.
Once more from Plymouth and Portsmouth towns the news has spread like fire,
Instead of the chaise and its sweating team, it's carried by miles of wire;
Though beer is scarce and tobacco dear, and no fiddlers to give a tune,
Men talk of the fleet that held the field, and prayed for a "First of June." ”

“ Eyes in the Air
OUR guns are a league behind us, our target a mile below,⁠
And there's never a cloud to blind us from the haunts of our lurking foe—
Sunk pit whence his shrapnel tore us, support-trench crest concealed,
As clear as the charts before us, his ramparts lie revealed. ”

“ And an enemy baffled by English strength, turned from an East Coast raid.
⁠They'll know they travel because men fought
⁠And skilfully handled what strong men wrought.
Thousands who never have seen the sea, or the great grey steel-clad forms,
Or the lithe black shapes of the smaller craft, or the scud of the North Sea storms,
Will talk of armour and shells and guns, and the battle by Horn Reef light,
And of sunken ships and of brave deeds done in the hours of a short May night.
⁠No song and no dance!—but they've lost the fear
⁠Of losing their maids and their baccy and beer. ”

“ A LEAPING wind from England,
⁠The skies without a stain,
Clean cut against the morning
⁠Slim poplars after rain,
The foolish noise of sparrows
⁠And starlings in a wood—
After the grime of battle
⁠We know that these are good.
Death whining down from heaven,
⁠Death roaring from the ground,
Death stinking in the nostril,
⁠Death shrill in every sound,
Doubting we charged and conquered—
⁠Hopeless we struck and stood ”

“ In the hot trench beneath,
We bide the next shrewd move of fate
Be it of life or death.
2. Night Bombardment
Softly in the silence the evening rain descends. . . .
The soft wind lifts the rain-mist, flurries it, and spends
Itself in mournful sighs, drifting from field to field,
Soaking the draggled sprays which the low hedges wield
As they labour in the wet and the load of the wind. ”

“ I was a dreamer ever, and bound to your dear service
Meditating deep, I thought on your secret beauty,
As through a child's face one may see the clear spirit
Miraculously shining.
Your hills not only hills, but friends of mine and kindly,
Your tiny knolls and orchards hidden beside the river
Muddy and strongly flowing, with shy and tiny streamlets
Safe in its bosom.
Now these are memories only, and your skies and rushy sky-pools
Fragile mirrors easily broken by moving airs ”

“ Nor taste the salt of channel winds, nor hear the singing Rhine.
You'll sleep with friends and enemies until the trumpet sounds,
And open are the thrones of kings, and all the Trojan mounds.
When women's tears arc rainbows then, that shine across the sky,
And swords are raised in last salute, to a comrade enemy,
And what men fought and failed for, or what men strove and won,
Are like forgotten shadows, and clouds that hid the sun. ”

“ Such, such is Death: no triumph: no defeat:
Only an empty pail, a slate rubbed clean,
A merciful putting away of what has been,
And this we know: Death is not Life effete,
Life crushed, the broken pail. We who have seen
So marvellous things know well the end's not yet. ”

“ SINCE above Time, upon Eternity
⁠The lovely essence of true loving's set,
Time shall not triumph over you and me,
⁠Nor—though we pay his debt—
Shall Death hold mastery.
Your eyes are bright for ever. ”

“ The Willow-tree Bough
MY heart's at the war with a good-natured rifleman
⁠Where he stands firing his foemen to slay:
While he was home with us, laughter and liveliness—
⁠Night time or church time 'twas all holiday.
⁠Friends who fall in with a good-natured rifleman
⁠Tell him his Helen abides by her vow
⁠Just as she swore when her William, last January,
⁠Carved his sweet name on the willow-tree bough. ”

“ The land is kind to a soul unsound; I find and probe the flaw,
For I am the tears of eternity that rock to eternal law."
I love the touch of the clean salt spray on my hands and hair and face,
I love to feel the long ship leap, when she feels the sea's embrace,
While down below is the straining hull, o'erhead the gulls and clouds,
And the clean wind comes 'cross the vast sea space, and sings its song in the shrouds.
But now in my dreams, besides the sounds one always hears at sea,
I hear the mutter of distant guns, which call and call to me,
Singing: "Come! ”

“ Fulfilment
WAS there love once? I have forgotten her.
⁠Was there grief once? Grief still is mine.
Other loves I have; men rough, but men who stir
⁠More joy, more grief than love of thee and thine. ”

“ To read with frowning eyes and discontented mind
The shining history that you are gone to make,
To sleep with working brain, to dream and to awake
Into another day of most ignoble peace,
To drowse, to read, to smoke, to pray that war may cease. ”

“ Nor yet succeed in bridging o'er the pit.
He knows the reason, He that ordered it,
Who bade us love but never understand.
He fixed the barrier as He saw fit,
And bade us yearn and still stretch forth the hand
Across the very sea He'd said should ne'er be spanned.
But sure this great and aching love of mine,
That ever yearns to know and to be known,
Can tear the veil that sometimes seems so fine
As though 'twere cobweb waiting but the blow
To fall asunder and for ever go. ”