GopyrigIit'N?_- COPYRIGHT DEPOSm / A TREASURY OF WAR POETRY Second Series A TREASURY OF WAR POETRY BRITISH AND AMERICAN POEMS OF THE WORLD WAR 1914-1919 SECOND SERIES EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES, BY GEORGE HERBERT CLARKE Professor of English in the University of Tennessee BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY ®bz Bitoer^ibe $re#* Cambri&ge 1919 O^V>>. COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY GEORGE HERBERT CLARKE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED /.ft OUl >9 I9S9 ©GU'580883 ®o ail tWjose m\)o Witn for iFreeDom ; Now let us all for the Perssy praye To Jhesu most of myght, To bryng hys sowlle to the blysse of heven, For he was a gentyll knyght." __ The Battle of Otterburn. " Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument, But greatly to find quarrel in a straw When honour 's at the stake." — William Shakespeare. "Prepare, prepare the iron helm of war, Bring forth the lots, cast in the spacious orb; The Angel of Fate turns them with mighty hands, And casts them out upon the darkened earth. Prepare, prepare!" — William Blake "O Englishmen I— in hope and creed, In blood and tongue our brothers! We too are heirs of Runny mede; And Shakespeare's fame and Cromwell's deed Are not alone our mother's. "'Thicker than water,' in one rill Through centuries of story Our Saxon blood has flowed, and still We share with you its good and ill, The shadow and the glory. "Joint neirs and kinfolk, leagues of wave Nor length of years can part us; Your right is ours to shrine and grave, The common freehold of the brave. The gifts of saints and martyrs." — John Greenleaf Whither CONTENTS I. AMERICA John Helston: "Advance, America!" .... 3 Morley Roberts: To America 3 O. W. Firkins: To America in War Time .... 4 Harry Kemp: The New Ally 5 II. ENGLAND AND AMERICA Maurice Hewlett: The Fourth of July, 1776 . . 9 Percy MacKaye: Magna Carta 9 Margaretta Byrde: America at St. Paul's . . .11 Robert Underwood Johnson: Two Flags upon West- minster Towers 12 Laurence Binyon: The New World 13 III. ENGLAND C. W. Brodribb: Expeditional 19 Sir Henry Newbolt: St. George's Day .... 20 Lance-Corporal Francis Ledwidge: Evening in England 21 C. Fox Smith: Saint George of England .... 21 IV. SCOTLAND Neil Munro: Pipes in Arras 27 Neil Munro: "Lochaber no More" 29 Isabel Westcott Harper: Highland Night ... 30 V. IRELAND Norreys Jephson O'Conor: Moira's Keening ... 33 Winifred M. Letts: The Connaught Rangers . . 34 VI. BELGIUM Helen Gray Cone: To Belgium 39 Lieutenant Herbert Asquith : A Flemish Village . 39 CONTENTS Blanche Weitbrec: A Ballade of Broken Things . . 40 M. Forrest: The Heroes 41 VII. FRANCE Hilaire Belloc: Sedan 45 Grace Ellert Channing: Flower-Beds in the Tuileries 45 John Finley: The Valleys of the Blue Shrouds ... 46 Marion Couthouy Smith: Sainte Jeanne of France . 49 VIII. ITALY Moray Dalton: To Italy 53 IX. SERBIA, GREECE, AND ROUMANIA Lance-Corporal Francis Ledwidge: Autumn Evening in Serbia 57 Florence Earle Coates: Serbia 57 Lance-Corporal Francis Ledwidge: The Home- coming of the Sheep 58 George Edward Woodberry: Roumania ... 59 X. CANADA Arthur L. Phelps: Old War 63 Bliss Carman: The War Cry of the Eagles ... 63 XI. AUSTRALASIA C. Fox Smith: Farewell to Anzac 69 Will H. Ogilvie: Queenslanders 70 Ben Kendim: The New Zealander 71 XII. YPRES Colonel Lord Gorell: Ypres . . . . . . .75 W. S. S.Lyon: Easter at Ypres: 1915 77 Margaret L. Woods: The First Battle of Ypres . . 78 George Herbert Clarke: Ruins 82 XIII. OXFORD Laurence Binyon: Oxford in War-Time .... 87 Christopher Morley: To the Oxford Men in the War . 89 CONTENTS xi W. Snow: The Ghosts of Oxford 90 Mildred Huxley: Subalterns 91 XIV. REFLECTIONS Thomas Hardy: In Time of "The Breaking of Nations" 95 John Galsworthy: The Soldier Speaks .... 95 Wilfrid "Wilson Gibson: The Ragged Stone ... 97 Henry van Dyke : The Peaceful Warrior .... 98 Sir A. Conan Doyle: The Guns in Sussex ... 98 A. E.: Gods of War 100 Kathleen Knox: A Lost Land 102 John Drinkwater: Of Greatham 103 Olive Tilford Dargan: 'It Will be a Hard Winter' . 105 Patrick R. Chalmers: The Steeple 106 L. W. : Christ in Flanders 108 Edith Wharton: Battle Sleep 109 Gamaliel Bradford: Napoleon 110 Dana Burnet: Napoleon's Tomb 110 H. H. Bashford: The Vision of Spring, 1916 . . .112 Vachel Lindsay: Niagara 114 John Freeman: The Stars in their Courses . . .116 Clinton Scollard: A Summer Morning . . . .119 Lieutenant- Colonel Sir Ronald Ross: Apocalypse . 119 G. O. Warren: Fulfilment 122 Guy Kendall: To my Pupils, Gone before Their Day . 123 Theodosia Garrison: "These Shall Prevail" . .124 Josephine Preston Peabody: Military Necessity . 125 Everard Owen: Ypres Tower, Rye 125 Stuart P. Sherman: Kaiser and Counsellor . . .126 Odell Shepard: The Hidden Weaver . . . .127 . v . .129 . . . 132 . . . 133 . . . 134 A. E.: Shadows and Lights Lieutenant F. W. Harvey: The Bugler Evelyn Underhill: Non-Combatants W. H. Draper: The Red Christmas . Sara Teasdale: "There Will Come Soft Rains" . . 135 Ethel M. Hewitt: Bois-Etoile 136 Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley: Going to the Front 137 xii CONTENTS Louise Imogen Guiney: Despotisms 138 John Masefield: The Choice 139 XV. INCIDENTS AND ASPECTS F. W. Bourdillon: The Call 143 Lieutenant William Rose Benet: Front Line . . 144 Eden Phillpotts: In Gallipoli 145 John Gould Fletcher: The Last Rally .... 146 Rowland Thirlmere : Richmond Park .... 148 Patrick R. Chalmers: Infantry 149 Gilbert Keith Chesterton: The Ballad of St. Barbara 150 Maud Anna Bell: From a Trench 158 George Sterling: Henri 159 Neil Munro: Romance 161 Isabel Ecclestone Mackay: The Recruit . . . . 163 John Gould Fletcher: Channel Sunset .... 164 Maxwell Struthers Burt: Pierrot at War . . . 164 Florence Ripley Mastin: At the Movies . . . 165 Katharine Tynan: High Summer 166 XVI. POETS MILITANT Lieutenant Rupert Brooke : Safety .... 169 Lieutenant Rupert Brooke: Peace 169 Lance-Corporal Francis Ledwidge: The Place . . 170 Lance-Corporal Francis Ledwidge: Evening Clouds 171 Captain Lord Dunsany: Songs from an Evil Wood . 171 Captain Charles Hamilton Sorley: A Letter from the Trenches 175 Flight-Commander Miles Jeffrey Game Day: To my Brother 178 Sergeant Joyce Kilmer: The New School . . .180 Sergeant Joyce Kilmer: Kings 181 Lieutenant Robert Nichols: Comrades: An Episode 182 Lieutenant Robert Nichols: Nearer .... 185 Captain Siegfried Sassoon: The Troops . . . .186 Captain Siegfried Sassoon: Trench Duty . . . 187 Captain T. P. Cameron Wilson: Magpies in Picardy . 188 CONTENTS xiii Lieutenant Frederic Manning: The Face . . . 189 Lieutenant Frederic Manning: Relieved . . .190 Lieutenant Frederic Manning: Transport . . . 190 Captain James H. Knight-Adkin: Dead Man's Cot- tage 191 Captain Robert Graves: The Last Post .... 193 Lieutenant Herbert Asquith: On a Troopship, 1915 193 Patrick MacGill: Before the Charge . . . .194 Patrick MacGill: In the Morning 195 Lieutenant E. Wyndham Tennant: Reincarnation . 196 Lieutenant E. Wyndham Tennant: Light after Darkness 197 Captain Edward de Stein: To a Skylark behind our Trenches 198 Lieutenant E. Armine Wodehouse: Before Ginchy . 199 Lieutenant E. Armlne Wodehouse: Next Morning . 202 Captain James Norman Hall: A Finger and a Huge, Thick Thumb 204 Lieutenant William Noel Hodgson ("Edward Mel- bourne "): God's Hills 208 Captain Gilbert Frankau : Ammunition Column . . 210 Captain Gilbert Frankau: The Voice of the Guns . 212 Bernard Freeman Trotter: A Kiss .... 214 Bernard Freeman Trotter: The Poplars . . . 216 Captain William G. Shakespeare: The Cathedral . 217 Lieutenant-Commander E. Hilton Young: Memo- ries 218 W. S. S. Lyon: Lines Written in a Fire-Trench . . .218 Lieutenant Joseph Lee: Back to London: A Poem of Leave 219 Lieutenant-Colonel W. Campbell Galbraith: Red Poppies in the Corn 222 Captain W. Kersley Holmes: Horse-Bathing Parade . 223 Lieutenant Robert Haven Schauffler: After Action 224 Captain James Sprent : A Confession of Faith . . . 224 Lieutenant Ronald Lewis Carton: Hereafter . . 225 xiv CONTENTS XVn. KEEPING THE SEAS Alfred Notes: Wireless 231 Alfred Notes: "The Vindictive" 232 Robert Bridges: The Chivalry of the Sea . . . 234 Sir William Watson: The Battle of the Bight . . 235 Sir Henrt Newbolt : The Song of the Guns at Sea . 237 Morlet Roberts: The Merchantmen .... 238 Wilfred Campbell: Where Kitchener Sleeps . . . 240 Katharine Ttnan: After Jutland 241 J. Edgar Middleton: Off Heligoland .... 242 Lieutenant-Commander N. M. F. Corbett: The Auxiliary Cruiser 243 C Fox Smith: The North Sea Ground . . . .245 Henrt Head: Destroyers 247 Lieutenant Nowell Oxland: Outward Bound . . 248 Cecil Roberts: Watchmen of the Night .... 250 Norah M. Holland: Captains Adventurous . . . 251 XVni. THE AIRMEN George Edward Woodberrt: To the Wingless Vic- tory 255 Grace Hazard Conkling: Letter to an Aviator in France 256 Duncan Campbell Scott: To a Canadian Aviator who Died for his Country in France ..... 259 Florence Earle Coates: Captain Guynemer . . 260 Captain Paul Bewsher: Searchlights .... 261 XIX. THE WOUNDED > Robert Bridges: Trafalgar Square 265 Amt Lowell: Convalescence 266 Rowland Thirlmere: Gassed 266 Edward Shillito: Invalided 268 Edith M. Thomas: The Red Cross Nurse . . .269 CONTENTS xv XX. THE FALLEN Sir Henry Newbolt: Hie Jacet Qui in Hoc Saeculo Fideliter Militavit 273 Wilfrid Wilson Gibson: Lament 273 Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae: In Flanders Fields 274 Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae: The Anxious Dead 274 John Galsworthy: Valley of the Shadow . . . 275 Lord Crewe: A Harrow Grave in Flanders . . . 275 John Drinkwater: Riddles, R.F.C 276 Captain Charles Hamilton Sorley: The Dead . . 277 Barry Pain: The Army of the Dead 277 G. O. Warren: The Spectral Army 278 John Jay Chapman: To a Dog 279 Norreys Jephson O'Conor: For Francis Ledwidge . 280 A. E.: The Last Hero 281 Wilfrid Wilson Gibson: Rupert Brooke .... 281 Eden Phillpotts: To Rupert Brooke 283 Sir Owen Seaman: To the Memory of Field-Marshal Earl Kitchener 284 Amelia Josephine Burr: Kitchener's March . . . 285 George Edward Woodberry: Edith Cavell . . . 286 Thomas Hardy: Before Marching, and After . . . 287 W. L. Courtney: To our Dead 288 G. E. Rees: Telling the Bees 289 Captain A. T. Nankivell: The House of Death . . 290 Margaret Adelaide Wilson: Gervais .... 290 Lieutenant Sigourney Thayer: The Dead . . . 291 Claude Houghton: To the Fallen 291 Captain T. P. Cameron Wilson: Sportsmen in Para- dise 292 A. E. Murray: The Dead 292 Duncan Campbell Scott: To a Canadian Lad, Killed in the War 294 Moray Dalton: To Some Who have Fallen . . . 294 xvi CONTENTS Lieutenant-Colonel Frederick George Scott: The Silent Toast Captain W. Kersley Holmes: Fallen John Hogben: "Somewhere in France" Marjorie Wilson: To Tony ( Aged 3 ) Mildred Huxley: To my Godson Katharine Tynan: New Heaven Lieutenant Ronald Lewis Carton: Reveille 1 295 296 297 298 299 301 302 XXI. WOMEN AND THE WAR Winifred M. Letts: The Call to Arms in our Street . 305 G. O. Warren: The Endless Army 306 Katharine Tynan: The Mother . . \ . . .307 Marjorie Wilson: The Devonshire Mother . . . 308 F.^W. Bourdillon: The Heart-Cry . \ . . .310 Margaret Widdemer: Homes 310 Edward J. O'Brien: Song 311 Josephine Preston Peabody: Seed-Time . . .311 Captain Gilbert Frankau: Mother and Mate . .311 Gabrielle Elliot: Pierrot Goes to War . . . . 312 Katherine Hale : Grey Knitting 313 Katharine Tynan: At Parting 314 Beatrice W. Ravenel: Missing 314 XXII. PEACE Austin Dobson: Clean Hands 319 G. O. Warren: Peace . . 319 Richard Le Gallienne: After the War .... 320 Marjorie L. C. Pickthall: When it is Finished . . 321 Eden Phillpotts: Reveille 1 322 OCCASIONAL NOTES 323 INDEXES . 339 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The Editor desires to express his appreciation of the aid rendered him by many friends and correspon- dents in preparing the Second Series of A Treasury of War Poetry. Among them he would particularly mention Mr. Norreys Jephson O'Conor, of Harvard University; Mr. Francis Parsons, of Hartford, Con- necticut; Miss Olympe Trabue, of Washington, D.C.; and Mrs. Frank F. Frantz and Mrs. William Carey Ross, of Knoxville, Tennessee. He is sensible also of the frequent assistance of the Misses Lucy E. Fay (now of the Carnegie Library School, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), Agnes R. Williams, and Ellen A. Johnson, as Librarians in the University of Tennessee, and of Miss Mary U. Rothrock, Librarian of the Lawson-McGhee Library, of Knoxville. He wishes to acknowledge the courtesies generously extended by the following authors, au- thors' representatives, periodicals, and publishers in granting their permission for the use of the poems indicated, rights in which are in each case reserved by the owner of the copyright : — The Rt. Hon. H. H. Asquith, Lady Cynthia Asquith, and the Spectator: — "On a Troopship, 1915" and "A Flemish Village," by Lieutenant Herbert Asquith. Dr. H. H. Bashford and the Nation (London) : — "The Vision of Spring, 1916," from Songs out of School (Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, and Messrs. Constable & Company, London). Miss Maud Anna Bell and the London Times: — "From a Trench." Mr. Hilaire Belloc and the New Witness: — " Sedan." Lieutenant William Rose Benet and the Century Magazine: — "Front Line." xviii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Captain Paul Bewsher and the London Graphic: — " Searchlights," from The Bombing of Bruges (Messrs. Hodder & Stoughton). Mr. Laurence Binyon and the New York Times: — "The New World"; Mr. Binyon and the Atlantic Monthly: — "Oxford in War Time," from The New World (Elkin Mathews, London). Mr. F. W. Bourdillon: — "The Heart-Cry"; Mr. Bourdillon and the Spectator: — "The Call." Dr. Gamaliel Bradford and the Nation (New York) : — "Napoleon." Mr. Robert Bridges and the London Times: — "The Chivalry of the Sea" and "Trafalgar Square." Mr. C. W. Brodribb and the London Times: — "Expeditional." Mr. Dana Burnet and the New York Evening Sun: — "Napoleon's Tomb." Miss Amelia Josephine Burr: — "Kitchener's March," from Life and Living (Messrs. George H. Doran Company). Mr. Maxwell Struthers Burt and Scribner's Maga- zine: — "Pierrot at War." Miss Margaretta Byrde and the Spectator: — "America at St. Paul's." Mrs. Wilfred Campbell and The Musson Book Com- pany (Toronto): — "Where Kitchener Sleeps," by the late Wilfred Campbell. Mr. Bliss Carman : — "The War Cry of the Eagles," from The Man of the Marne, and Other Poems. Lieutenant Ronald Lewis Carton: — "Hereafter" and "Reveille," from Steel and Flowers (Elkin Ma- thews, London). Mr. Patrick R. Chalmers and Punch: — "Infantry" and "The Steeple." Mrs. Grace Ellery Channing-Stetson and the New York Tribune: — "Flower-Beds in the Tuileries." Mr. John Jay Chapman and Vanity Fair: — "To a Dog." ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xix Mr. Gilbert Keith Chesterton and the New Witness: — "The Ballad of St. Barbara." Mrs. Florence Earle Coates: — "Serbia" and "Captain Guynemer." Miss Helen Gray Cone and the New York Times: — "To Belgium." Mrs. Grace Hazard Conkling: — "Letter to an Aviator in France." Lieutenant-Commander N. M. F. Corbett and Land and Water: — "The Auxiliary Cruiser." Mr. W. L. Courtney and the Fortnightly Review: — "To Our Dead." Lord Crewe and the Harrovian: — "A Harrow Grave in Flanders." Mr. Moray Dalton and the Spectator: —"To Italy " ; Mr. Dalton and the West Sussex Gazette: — "To Some Who Have Fallen." Mrs. Olive Tilford Dargan and the Atlantic Monthly: — "'It Will Be a Hard Winter.'" Captain Edward de Stein and the London Times: — "To a Skylark behind Our Trenches," from The Poets in Picardy (John Murray, London). Mr. Austin Dobson: — "Clean Hands." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the London Times: — " The Guns in Sussex." Rev. W. H. Draper and the Spectator: — "The Red Christmas," from Poems of the Love of England (Messrs. Chatto & Windus). Mr. John Drinkwater and Messrs. Sidgwick & Jackson : — "Riddles, R. F. C." (the Saturday Review), and "Of Greatham." Captain Lord Dunsany and the Saturday Review: — "Songs from an Evil Wood." Miss Gabrielle Elliot and the New York Times: — "Pierrot Goes to War." Mrs. Theodosia Garrison Faulks and Good House- keeping: — "'These Shall Prevail.'" xx ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Mrs. Sara Teasdale Filsinger and Harper's Maga- z i ne: _ "'There Will Come Soft Rains.'" Dr. John H. Finley and the Yale Review: — "The Valleys of the Blue Shrouds." Professor 0. W. Firkins and the Nation (New York) : — "To America in War Time." Mr. John Gould Fletcher and the Century Magazine: — "The Last Rally"; Mr. Fletcher and the New Republic: — "Channel Sunset." Mrs. M. Forrest and the Spectator: — "The Heroes." Captain Gilbert Frankau: — "Ammunition Col- umn" and "The Voice of the Guns," from The Guns (Messrs. Chatto & Windus, London) and A Song of the Guns (Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Company, Bos- ton); and "Mother and Mate," from The Other Side, and Other Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, New York). Mr. John Freeman : — "The Stars in their Courses," from Presage of Victory, and Other Poems of the Time (Messrs. Selwyn & Blount, London). Lieutenant-Colonel W. Campbell Galbraith and the Westminster Gazette: — "Red Poppies in the Corn." Mr. John Galsworthy and the London Chronicle: — "The Soldier Speaks"; Mr. Galsworthy and the Nation (London): — "Valley of the Shadow," from A Sheaf (Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, and William Heinemann, London). Mrs. John W. Garvin (Katherine Hale), the Toronto Globe, and William Briggs, Toronto: — "Grey Knit- ting." Lady Glenconner: — "Reincarnation" and "Light after Darkness," from Worple Flit, by the late Lieu- tenant E. Wyndham Tennant. Mr. Wilfrid Wilson Gibson and the Fortnightly Re- view: — "Rupert Brooke," from Battle, and Other Poems (The Macmillan Company); "Lament" and " The Ragged Stone," from Hill-Tracks (The Mac- millan Company). ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xxi Colonel Lord Gorell and the Contemporary Review: — "Ypres," from Days of Destiny (Messrs. Longmans, Green & Company). Captain Robert Graves and the Nation (London) : — " The Last Post," from Fairies and Fusiliers (Wil- liam Heinemann, London). Miss Louise Imogen Guiney and the Nation (New York) : — "Despotisms." Mr. Thomas Hardy and the Fortnightly Review: — "Before Marching, and After"; Mr. Hardy and the Saturday Review: — "In Time of 'the Breaking of Nations,'" from Moments of Vision (Messrs. Mac- millan & Company). Miss Isabel Westcott Harper and Chambers' Jour- nal: — "Highland Night, 1715, 1815, 1915." Lieutenant F. W. Harvey: — "The Bugler," from Gloucester Friends (Messrs. Sidgwick & Jackson, London). Dr. Henry Head and the Yale Review: — "Destroy- ers," from Destroyers, and Other Verses (Oxford Uni- versity Press). Mr. John Helston: — "Advance, America!" Mr. Aubrey Herbert ("Ben Kendim") and the Spectator: — "The New Zealander." Miss Ethel M. Hewitt and Harper's Magazine: — "Bois Etoile." Mr . Maurice Hewlett :—" The Fourth of July , 1 776 . " Mrs. Katharine Tynan Hinkson and the New Wit- ness: — "High Summer"; Mrs. Hinkson and the Nation (London): — "New Heaven"; "After Jut- land," "The Mother," and "At Parting," from Late Songs (Messrs. Sidgwick & Jackson). Mr. John Hogben and the Spectator: — "' Some- where in France.'" Miss Norah M. Holland: — "Captains Adventu- rous" (Messrs. J. M. Dent & Company, London and Toronto). XX11 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Captain W. Kersley Holmes and the Glasgow News: — "Fallen" and "Horse-Bathing Parade," from More Ballads of Field and Billet (Alexander Gardner, Paisley) . Mr. Claude Houghton and the New Witness: — "To the Fallen," from The Phantom Host (Elkin Mathews, London). Miss Mildred Huxley and the Spectator: — "Sub- alterns" and "To my Godson." Mr. Robert Underwood Johnson and the Indepen- dent: — "Two Flags upon Westminster Towers." Mr. Harry Kemp and Munsey's Magazine: — "The New Ally." Dr. Guy Kendall and the Spectator: — "To my Pupils, Gone before their Day," from The Call, and Other Poems (Messrs. Chapman & Hall). Captain James H. Knight-Adkin and the Spectator: — "Dead Man's Cottage." Miss Kathleen Knox and Punch: — "A Lost Land." Lieutenant Joseph Lee and the Spectator: — "Back to London: A Poem of Leave." Mr. Richard Le Gallienne: — "After the War." Miss Winifred M. Letts and the Westminster Ga- zette: — "The Call to Arms in our Street"; Miss Letts and the Yale Review: — "The Connaught Rangers." Mr. Vachel Lindsay: — "Niagara," from The Chi- nese Nightingale, and Other Poems (The Macmillan Company). Miss Amy Lowell and Scribner's Magazine: — " Con- valescence." Rev. W. T. Lyon: — "Lines Written in a Fire- Trench" and "Easter at Ypres, 1915," by the late W. S. S. Lyon, from Easter at Ypres, 1915, and Other Poems (Messrs. James Maclehose & Sons , Glasgow). Mr. Patrick MacGill: — "Before the Charge" and "In the Morning," from Soldier Songs (Herbert Jen- kins, Ltd., London, and Messrs. E. P. Dutton & Com- pany, New York). ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xxiii Mrs. Isabel Ecclestone Mackay and the Canadian Magazine: — "The Recruit"; Mrs. MacKay and the Forum: — "Killed in Action." Mr. Percy MacKaye: — "Magna Carta," from The Present Hour (The Macmillan Company). Lieutenant Frederic Manning: — "The Face," "Relieved," and "Transport," from Eidola (John Murrajr, London, and Messrs. E. P. Dutton & Com- pany, New York). Mrs. Josephine Preston Peabody Marks: — "Mili- tary Necessity" and "Seed-Time," from Harvest Moon (Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Company). Mr. Edward Marsh, literary executor of the late Lieutenant Rupert Brooke: — "Peace" and "Safety," from The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke (The John Lane Company, New York) and from 191J/., and Other Poems (Messrs. Sidgwick & Jackson, London, and Messrs. McClelland & Stewart, Toronto). Mr. John Masefield and Contemporary Verse: " The Choice." Miss Florence Ripley Mastin and the New York Times: — "At the Movies," from Green Leaves (Messrs. James T. White & Company). Mrs. David McCrae and Dr. Thomas McCrae: — "In Flanders Fields" {Punch) and "The Anxious Dead" (the Spectator), from In Flanders Fields, and Other Poems (Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York.) Mr. J. Edgar Middleton: — "Off Heligoland," from Sea-Dogs and Men-at-Arms (Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, and Messrs. McClelland & Stewart, Toronto) . Mrs. Evelyn Stuart Moore ("Evelyn Underhill ") and the Westminster Gazette: — "Non-Combatants," from Immanence (Messrs. J. M. Dent & Company, London, and Messrs. E. P. Dutton & Company, New York). Mr. Christopher Morley : — "To the Oxford Men in the War," from Songs for a Little House (The George H. Doran Company). xxiv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Mr. Neil Munro and Blackwood's Magazine: — "Romance," "Pipes in Arras," and "'Lochaber no More!'" Miss A. E. Murray and the Nation (London) : — "The Dead." Captain A. T. Nankivell and the Westminster Ga- zette: — "The House of Death." Sir Henry Newbolt: — "St. George's Day," "The Song of the Guns at Sea," and "Hie Jacet Qui in Hoc Saeculo Militavit." Lieutenant Robert Nichols: — "Comrades: An Episode," and "Nearer," from Ardours and Endurances (The Frederick A. Stokes Company). Mr. Alfred Noyes: — "Wireless" and "'The Vin- dictive,'" from The New Morning (The Frederick A. Stokes Company). Mr. Edward J. O'Brien and the Century Magazine: — "Song." Mr. Norreys Jephson O'Conor: — "Moira's Keen- ing"; Mr. O'Conor and Contemporary Verse: — "For Francis Ledwidge." Mr. Will H. Ogilvie and the Spectator: — "Queens- landers" (Messrs. Angus & Robertson, Ltd., Sydney, Australia). Rev. Everard Owen: — "Ypres Tower, Rye." Mr. Barry Pain and the Westminster Gazette: — "The Army of the Dead." Rev. Arthur L. Phelps and the Canadian Magazine: — "Old War." Mr. Eden Phillpotts : — " In Gallipoli," "To Ru- pert Brooke," and "Reveille," from Plain Song, 1911*- 1916 (The Macmillan Company, New York, and William Heinemann, London). Miss Marjorie L. C. Pickthall: — "When it is Finished." Mrs. Beatrice W. Ravenel and the Atlantic Monthly: — "Missing." ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XXV Rev. Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley: — "Going to the Front." Rev. G. E. Rees and the Westminster Gazette: — "Telling the Bees." Mr. Cecil Roberts and the Poetry Review: — "Watch- men of the Night." Mr. Morley Roberts and the Westminster Gazette: — "To America" and "The Merchantmen," from War Lyrics (Messrs. Selwyn & Blount, London). Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Ronald Ross and the Poetry Review: — "Apocalypse." Mr. George W. Russell (" A. E.") and the London Times: — "Gods of War" and "Shadows and Lights"; Mr. Russell and Messrs. Macmillan & Company: — "The Last Hero." Captain Siegfried Sassoon (by Lieutenant Robert Nichols) : — "The Troops" and "Trench Duty," from Counter- Attack, and Other Poems (Messrs. E. P. Dut- ton & Company, New York, and William Heinemann, London). Lieutenant Robert Haven Schauffler: — "After Action." Mr. Clinton Scollard: — "A Summer Morning," from Let the Flag Wave (Messrs. James T. White & Company, New York). Mr. Duncan Campbell Scott: — "To a Canadian Lad Killed in the War," from Lundy's Lane, and Other Poems (The George H. Doran Company, New York, and Messrs. McClelland & Stewart, Toronto); Mr. Scott and Scribner's Magazine: — "To a Canadian Aviator who Died for his Country in France." Lieutenant-Colonel Frederick George Scott : — "The Silent Toast" (Messrs. Constable & Company, London). Sir Owen Seaman and Punch: — "To the Memory of Field-Marshal Earl Kitchener." Captain William G. Shakespeare: — "The Cathe- XXVI ACKNOWLEDGMENTS dral," from Ypres, and Other Poems. (Messrs. Sidgwick & Jackson, London). Professor Odell Shepard: — "The Hidden Weaver," from A Lonely Flute (Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Com- pany). Professor Stuart P. Sherman and the Nation (New York) : — "Kaiser and Counsellor." Mr. Edward Shillito and the London Chronicle: — "Invalided." Miss C. Fox Smith: — "Farewell to Anzac" (the Spectator) and "St. George of England," from Fighting Men (Elkin Mathews, London); Miss Smith and Punch: — "The North Sea Ground." By permission also of the George H. Doran Company, New York. Miss Marion Couthouy Smith and the Nation (New York) : — "Sainte Jeanne of France," from The Final Star (Messrs. James T. White & Company, New York). Mr. W. Snow and the Oxford Magazine: — "The Ghosts of Oxford." Professor William R. Sorley: — "A Letter from the Trenches" and "The Dead," by the late Captain Charles Hamilton Sorley, from Marlborough, and Other Poems (The Cambridge University Press). Mr. George Sterling and the Delineator: — "Henri." Rev. William G. Thayer and the Atlantic Monthly: — "The Dead," by Lieutenant Sigourney Thayer. Mr. Rowland Thirlmere: — "Richmond Park," from Diogenes at Athens, and Other Poems (Messrs. Selwyn & Blount, London); and "Gassed." Miss Edith M. Thomas and Harper's Magazine: — "The Red Cross Nurse." The late Professor Thomas Trotter: — "The Pop- lars," and "A Kiss," by the late Bernard Freeman Trotter, from A Canadian Twilight, and Other Poems of War and of Peace (McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, and the George H. Doran Company, New York). ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xxvii Dr. Henry van Dyke and Scribner's Magazine: — "The Peaceful Warrior." Mrs. G. O. Warren: — "The Spectral Army," "Peace," and "The Endless Army," from Trackless Regions (B. H. Blackwell, Oxford, and Messrs. Long- mans, Green & Company, New York); Mrs. Warren and the Spectator: — "Fulfilment." Sir William Watson: — "The Battle of the Bight," from The Man Who Saw, and Other Poems Arising out of the War (John Murray, London, and Messrs. Har- per & Brothers, New York). Miss Blanche Weitbrec and the New York Times: — "A Ballade of Broken Things." Mrs. Edith Wharton, the Century Magazine, and Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons: — "Battle Sleep." Miss Margaret Widdemer: — "Homes," from The Old Road to Paradise (Messrs. Henry Holt & Com- pany). Mrs. Fredeline Wilson, the Westminster Gazette, and Mr. Harold Monro, The Poetry Bookshop, London: — "Magpies in Picardy" and "Sportsmen in Paradise," by the late Captain T. P. Cameron Wilson. Miss Margaret Adelaide Wilson and the Yale Re- view: — " Gervais." Miss Marjorie Wilson and the Spectator: — "To Tony (Aged 3)"; Miss Wilson and the Westminster Gazette: — " The Devonshire Mother." Lieutenant E. Armine Wodehouse and the Fort- nightly Review: — "Before Ginchy"; "Next Morn- ing," from On Leave (Elkin Mathews, London). Dr. George Edward Woodberry and the Atlantic Monthly: — "To the Wingless Victory"; Dr. Wood- berry and the North American Review: — "Rou- mania"; Dr. Woodberry and Scribner's Magazine: — "Edith Cavell." Mrs. Margaret L. Woods and the Fortnightly Re- view: — "The First Battle of Ypres." xxviii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Lieutenant-Commander E. Hilton Young and the Cornhill Magazine: — "Memories." The Canadian Magazine: — "Ruins," by George Herbert Clarke. The Spectator: — "Christ in Flanders," by L. W.; and "To my Brother," by the late Flight-Commander Miles Jeffrey Game Day. The London Times: — "Outward Bound," by the late Lieutenant Nowell Oxland. Messrs. Cassell & Company, London, and the Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York: — "A Confession of Faith," by Captain James Sprent, from The Anzac Book (Anzac Book Committee). The George H. Doran Company, New York: — "Kings" and "The New School," from Main Street, and Other Poems, by the late Sergeant Joyce Kilmer. Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Company and the Cen- tury Magazine: — "A Finger and a Huge, Thick Thumb," by James Norman Hall. Herbert Jenkins, Ltd., London : — "Evening in Eng- land," "The Place," "Evening Clouds," "Autumn Evening in Serbia," and "The Homecoming of the Sheep," from Songs of Peace, by the late Lance- Corporal Francis Ledwidge, edited by Captain Lord Dunsany. John Murray and the New Witness: — "God's Hills," by the late Lieutenant William Noel Hodgson ("Edward Melbourne"). INTRODUCTION The demand for a Second Series of A Treasury of War Poetry led the Editor, nearly a year ago, to attempt the task of satisfying it. With the close of the Great War, it has become pos- sible to assemble its poetic voices, and to enlarge, with due regard for proportion, the choir presented in the First Series. Lest, in preparing the new volume, he should overlook good work produced during the earlier years of the war, but, for whatever reason, not in- cluded in the first collection, the Editor has required himself to review the output of British and Ameri- can war poetry, so far as it has seemed available in periodical literature, in individual books of verse, and in manuscripts. The chief difficulty experienced has been due to the necessity of eliminating some material that he would willingly have retained had the scope of his effort permitted. War, adventure, the mysteries of faith, the change- ful aspects of Nature (whether virgin or domesticated), and romantic love, — about these themes, or some variation or interrelation of them, the poets have al- ways wondered and sung. From all five of them de- rives a sense of anticipation, of discovery, of Platonic reminiscence. The significance of human life, the riddle of its essential quality, the meaning of its dis- cipline, the secret of its destiny, — these questions challenge the poet most of all. From this vantage and from that he attacks them with all the imaginative xxx INTRODUCTION ardour at his command, hoping that he may some- where disengage a hint of latent harmony, may lessen in some degree the perplexities of that "boundless Phantasmagoria and Dream-Grotto," — our human life. What is a poem, then, but a spiritual impulse and adventure shaped and realized (in part at least) in words of inspiring beauty, of passionate sincerity, of creative insight? But since life is whole, the artistic interpretation of life tends progressively toward unity. Poetry, says a true poet, 1 "is, on the one hand, a spirit, animating one individual here and another there; on the other hand, in its outward manifesta- tions, it is a collection of works produced by that spirit working in individuals." So Shelley speaks of "that great poem which all poets, like the co-operating thoughts of one great mind, have built up since the beginning of the world." And Sir William Watson writes: — "... 'neath the unifying sun, Many the songs — but Song is one." In a sense, then, we do less than justice to the spirit of poetry when we assign its outward manifestations too readily to class and category, save only as the study of form and manner may require. The phrase "war poetry" is a convenient one, but war poetry, after all, may be as broadly comprehensive in its in- sights and occasions as poetry which has no relation to war. If it be worthy, it is the finely wrought record of a sympathetic reaction to the enkindling heroisms of war, or of an antipathetic reaction to its sorrows, its brutalities and its uglinesses. Nobly conceived and 1 Sir Henry Newbolt: A New Study of English Poetry (Constable, London; Dutton, New York). INTRODUCTION xxxi expressed as are not a few poems written by combat- ants, the contention that the soldier-poet must pos- sess more authentic power as an interpreter of war than his equally endowed but non-militant fellow is, I think, without warrant. The history of war poetry does not so attest. When we respond to the epical struggles in Homer and Milton and Spenser, or follow the unfolding of the great war-pageantry of Shake- speare, or stir to the ringing music of the martial bal- lads; when we re-create for ourselves Drayton's Agin- court, Lovelace's incomparable lyrics to Lucasta, Col- lins' How Sleep the Brave, Cowper's Boadicea, Scott's Flodden Field and Bonny Dundee, Campbell's Hohen- linden, The Soldier s Dream, and The Battle of the Baltic, Tennyson's The Revenge, The Defence of Lucknow, and Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, Browning's Cavalier Tunes and Herve Riel, Walt Whitman's Drum-Taps, or Thomas Hardy's monumental drama, The Dynasts; — when these veritable war poems take hold upon us we have no need to seal our pleasure with any assurance that the writers did or did not physically participate in conflict. The true warrior-poet is born a poet, but becomes a warrior, and it is even possible that if his actual experience in war be too long con- tinued it may dull and blunt that restless, inquiring, delicately registering organ, the poet's mind. The poet in the soldier, indeed, may rejoice at his experience so long as it offers food imaginatively convenient for him, but the essay at the artistic interpretation of war is, like all similar efforts, primarily a spiritual undertak- ing, conditioned rather upon qualities of personality than upon definite objective contacts, valuable as these latter may be in point of stimulus. Whether he xxxii INTRODUCTION wear uniform or mufti, the war poet must imagine war, and imagination, 1 Carveth Read tells us, "is not made of particular fact, but of infinite analogies of things, and of things that were never observed or thought of until analogy called them to life." True poets, as Ibsen thought, are really far-sighted, whether the thing that inspires them be concretely near or far. Undoubtedly, the artist who functions in a world at peace might gain much from travel, should opportu- nity offer, but in any case he realizes that the world is made up of its own miniatures, and that he who inter- prets in a catholic spirit the life about him interprets all life. So, in a war-torn world, the poet becomes sen- sitively aware of the dreads and longings, the prides and pities, engendered by war within his own interior spirit and within the spirits of those about him. It is in these that the subtler meanings and realities of war are most surely to be found. Two points of difference, however, between the mili- tant and the non-militant war poet are sometimes ap- preciable. The fighting poet seems seldom to display a spirit of personal hatred toward the enemy, but ap- parently reserves his hatred for the impersonal Wrong for whose sake the enemy fights. This tendency is well illustrated by Lieutenant Joseph Lee's German Pris- oners; the late Captain Charles Hamilton Sorley's son- net, To Germany; Corporal Alexander Robertson's " Thou Shalt Love Thine Enemies," and James Norman 1 Carveth Read: The Function of Relations in Thought (The British Journal of Psychology, December, 1911). Cf. the graphic story, The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane, written before he had experienced war at first-hand. INTRODUCTION xxxiii Hall's Out of Flanders. And again, the poet at the front, unless he be a determined Realist, often turns impatiently away from the attempt to represent actual warfare, and tries instead to visualize some emotional antidote. As Lord Crewe x has discerningly said, "it seems that the soldier who is also a writer is as likely to set his mind on green fields and spring flowers as on the bloody drama in which he is an actor, and to tune his lyre accordingly. ... So that among the verse written by soldiers in this war it is not surprising to find as many poems recalling loves of home and mem- ories of country days as proclaiming the delight of battle, or even the loftier summons of patriotism and duty. Some of this work of to-day, as we all know, transcends the lyrical faculty which is the frequent appanage of youth, and reaches the level of true poetry; some of it is made sacred by the death of the writer, and cannot be coldly weighed in the balance." Whether or not, then, he be privileged to see war with the eye of sense, and to share its rigours and ar- dours with fellow-soldiers, the first duty of the war- poet toward his art is to be a poet, to discover the time- less and placeless in the momentary and parochial, and to bring back to us a true and moving report of the experience and behaviour of the human spirit during its recurrent struggles with its own worser self. If he be on active service, the poet will, like Archilochus, the more loyally render unto Ares the things that are Ares' because he continues to offer unto Apollo the things that are Apollo's. If he be involved in other than the military activities of war, he may have even 1 The Marquess of Crewe: War and English Poetry (The English Association). xxxiv INTRODUCTION the greater need to preach to himself as to his readers the gospel of Art, and to carry his priesthood pure through moments of civic dejection or gusty passion. In either case, it will be his ultimate desire as a poet to develop and express (even though indirectly) a poet's philosophy of war. And his philosophy will be both stern and kind, both just and magnanimous. He will not quarrel about professional or political attitudes toward war. He will not quarrel about attitudes at all. He will see war now as a great and gallant adventure; now as an inevitable molecular movement; now as the abomination of desolation; now, perhaps, as Rowland Thirlmere sees it in Nocturne : — "O silent heavens, where infinite kings abide, What wars impassion the invisible spheres That people you? What unimagined fears Possess their habitants? Does excessive pride Move them in cheerful hosts to fratricide? Beyond the eternal hope of earth, do tears Fall, as the unavenged widow peers Into the night with prayer unsatisfied? " Gods against gods may war in agony, — Sovereignties against sovereignties disperse Their lightnings in unending enmity Of good and ill, — and they whose thoughts accurse Our world, perchance fight now vicariously For secret princes of the universe." Sometimes war will seem to the poet, despite its evils, to offer an ennobling spiritual enfranchisement in the face of danger and death, to encourage the soul to renounce the petty timidities and cautions to which the prosaic life of getting on in the world teaches men to conform. Sometimes he will persuade himself that war is, in its essence, merely the noun that corresponds INTRODUCTION xxxv to the adjective dynamic, that it means effort, ad- venture, burden, growth, struggle, work, indeed the maintenance and development of one's being, that it includes every expression of ideas in the service of knowledge and wisdom, and that it is in this sense an inalienable condition of existence. And sometimes he will curse the very thought of war as he sees it over- sweep all humanity's painful safeguards, attacking the Ariel of man's hopes to make room for his enemy Cali- ban, brazenly emerging like an international Mr. Hyde from a too trustful Dr. Jekyll, and " reeling back into the beast." Thus he will be striking balances in mood and ver- dict, while the seemingly insoluble realities behind these conflicting thoughts continue to impinge upon one another. It is natural enough, therefore, that the long debate between Romanticism and Realism in art should have affected war poetry. The partisans of the work of Robert Nichols, Frederic Manning, and the later Siegfried Sassoon, and of Gilbert Frankau's grimly impatient protest, The Other Side, will find little in com- mon with those who turn habitually to Rupert Brooke, Alan Seeger, Francis Ledwidge, or Laurence Binyon. But poetry is a more flexible thing than are the minds of either its creators or its critics, who so often allow their temperamental differences to harden into creeds and dicta. Between Realist and Romanticist there is no radical, permanent cleavage. Both are aware that the world is made up of multiple symbols (for even the Realist's fact l is the symbol of an idea) ; both 1 "Beauty to her, as to all who have felt, lies not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolizes." — Thomas Hardy: Tess of the U Urbervilles. xxxvi INTRODUCTION select for artistic patterning such symbols as attract their respective imaginations. Realistic closeness to fact does not, if it be wise, aim at mere objective copy- ism, but rather at the precipitation of the bald fact's subjective values, while the Romantic singling out of the exceptional as against the commonplace is due merely to the belief that the exceptional (precisely because it is exceptional) is of more symbolic worth than the commonplace. The art that is broad enough to include the whispered assonances of Poe, the cryptic chants of Emerson, the flooding harmonies of Shelley, the dreamy magic of Keats and of Coleridge, the subtle appraisements of Browning, and the marrowy tales of Masefield, can reject neither the bare, hard fact of the Realist nor the "sleep and forgetting" of the Roman- ticist, provided only that the offering be beautiful in spirit and in truth. Idealistic Realism is as natural as idealistic Romanticism. The difference is one of vary- ing preference and emphasis in the choice and treat- ment of material. The same poet, it is apparent, may write, with equal success and sincerity, now in one mode, now in another; only he must make sure that fact-symbol and fancy-symbol are in each case pre- scribed by his imagination, and that the focus of his vision does not suffer distortion. Although Roman- ticism must continue to offer to the coming poet the most grateful means of escaping sufficiently from the physical world to observe its phenomena with the wholesome perspective of Art, yet he will readily adopt the realistic method where it is indicated by the scale and intention of his work. He may even synthetically employ "romantic realism" (to use Arthur Symons' phrase), as Browning did in Childe Roland to the Dark INTRODUCTION xxxvii Tower Came. The more creative the poet, indeed, the more difficult it must prove to " place " and confine him. He will care less for the defence of mere institutional- ism in poetics, less for theory and experimentation — even his own necessary theory and experimentation — than for the patient worship and service of that Truth which "Art remains the oneway possible" of discover- ing, — that true Truth, that essential Truth, which Mrs. Browning so thoughtfully opposes to "... relative, comparative, And temporal truths." In the poems that follow, the receptive reader will find many suggestions, finely and sensitively ex- pressed, of the essential truth of War, and of the spir- itual reciprocities between our personal lives and our national and international struggles. G. H. C. April, 1919 AMERICA "ADVANCE, AMERICA!" In winds that leave man's spirit cold And a great darkness overhead, They stood — bloodstained with ghostly red. Too young, too many far, they seemed, To be so soon, so grimly, dead, — Night more than mortal night, to hold All they had dreamed. . . . They were so many; and so young, they seemed. i "Halt ! Who goes there ? " The red ghosts on their beat of air Night-answered were: the word was, " Friend!" And as before their life had end, The sentinels who erstwhile halted Death, And died for it, a host of young men slain, In their red harness stood on guard again And shouted with recovered lease of breath — So that, and even as a thing surprised, The dread winds failed, to silence fell — " Advance, friend, and be recognized! " "Pass, friend! " and yet again, "All 's well! " Then as men turning restwards out of pain, "Pass, friend!" and now more faintly still, "All's well!" John Helston TO AMERICA Whatever penman wrote or orator Declaimed, I could not, for the soul of -me, Deem that the West had lost of liberty All but the name, and feared the sounds of War: 4 AMERICA Of them and theirs I was not ignorant, nor Had failed to learn what impulse set them free When alien kings held England's realm in fee, And what, in conquering, they had battled for. Kinsmen ! I see, in these dark pregnant hours Of shadow, when the heavens are overcast With smoke of ruined fanes and ancient towers, While throttled peoples yield and nations die, The morning star of vengeance shine at last, And hear your armies thundering prophecy. Morley Roberts TO AMERICA IN WAR TIME Grave hour and solemn choice — bare is the sword. From the raised altar, kneeling, take the blade. Be its grasp eucharist and accolade; High be, and holy, lest thou creep abhorred. Bethink thee — to the angel of the Lord None baser, was the slayer's right conveyed: Of thine own soul, no other's, be afraid; The hilts of brands are lethal, and have scored On palms once white the unhealing scar of crime. Honor with fortune, purity with weal, Hang trembling in the wind-blown scale of Mars: Earth is thy judge; the listening deeps of time Are witness, and yon azure's probing wheel, And vigils of inexorable stars. THE NEW ALLY II "Be thou but true" — old words which years renew — Nor suffer blood-gout nor flame's darkling glow __ To touch thy heart's inviolable snow. Go as a nun through bordels. Be thou true! Let the sun's glance, even as on rose and dew, Rest on thy sabre. Wraths and greeds forego Lest skies pale, and thy recreancy know, Too late, yon cope's estranged, receding blue. Nor clamp free tongues ! Hast thou yet steel to spare For fetters? Does the sword-arm clank the chain? Be strong to conquer, mighty to forbear; Bind us, ay, bind us — but with prayer and pain, With greatening purpose, till new love, set free — £