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THE RIVERSIDE LITERATURE SERIES
A TREASURY OF WAR POETRY
BRITISH AND AMERICAN POEMS OF THE WORLD WAR 1914-1917
Edited, With Introduction And Notes, By
GEORGE HERBERT CLARKE
Professor of English in the University of Tennessee
CONTENTS
I. AMERICA
RUDYARD KIPLING: The Choice
HENRY VAN DYKE: "Liberty Enlightening the World"
ROBERT BRIDGES: To the United States of America
VACHEL LINDSAY: Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight
JEANNE ROBERT FOSTER: The "William P. Frye"
II. ENGLAND AND AMERICA
FLORENCE T. HOLT: England and America
LIEUTENANT CHARLES LANGBRIDGE MORGAN: To America
HELEN GRAY CONE: A Chant of Love for England
HARDWICKE DRUMMOND RAWNSLEY: At St. Paul's: April 20, 1917
ROWLAND THIRLMERE: Jimmy Doane
ALFRED NOYES: Princeton, May, 1917
III. ENGLAND
SIR HENRY NEWBOLT: The Vigil
RUDYARD KIPLING: "For All we Have and Are"
JOHN GALSWORTHY: England to Free Men
SIR OWEN SEAMAN: Pro Patria
GEORGE HERBERT CLARKE: Lines Written in Surrey, 1917
IV. FRANCE
CECIL CHESTERTON: France
HENRY VAN DYKE: The Name of France
CHARLOTTE HOLMES CRAWFORD: Vive la France!
THEODOSIA GARRISON: The Soul of Jeanne d'Arc
EDGAR LEE MASTERS: O Glorious France
HERBERT JONES: To France
FLORENCE EARLE COATES: Place de la Concorde
CANON AND MAJOR FREDERICK GEORGE SCOTT: To France
GRACE ELLERY CHANNING: Qui Vive?
V. BELGIUM
LAURENCE BINYON: To the Belgians
EDITH WHARTON: Belgium
EDEN PHILLPOTTS: To Belgium
SIR OWEN SEAMAN: To Belgium in Exile
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON: The Wife of Flanders
VI. RUSSIA AND AMERICA
JOHN GALSWORTHY: Russia—America
ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON: To Russia New and Free
VII. ITALY
CLINTON SCOLLARD: Italy in Arms
GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY: On the Italian Front, MCMXVI
VIII. AUSTRALIA
ARCHIBALD T. STRONG: Australia to England
IX. CANADA
MARJORIE L. C. PICKTHALL: Canada to England
WILFRED CAMPBELL: Langemarck at Ypres
WILL H. OGILVIE: Canadians
X. LIÈGE
STEPHEN PHILLIPS: The Kaiser and Belgium
DANA BURNET: The Battle of Liège
XI. VERDUN
LAURENCE BINYON: Men of Verdun
EDEN PHILLPOTTS: Verdun
PATRICK R. CHALMERS: Guns of Verdun
XII. OXFORD
WINIFRED M. LETTS: The Spires of Oxford
W. SNOW: Oxford in War-Time
TERTIUS VAN DYKE: Oxford Revisited in War-Time
XIII. REFLECTIONS
GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY: Sonnets Written in the Fall of 1914
SIR HENRY NEWBOLT: The War Films
ALFRED NOYES: The Searchlights
PERCY MACKAYE: Christmas: 1915
THOMAS HARDY: "Men who March Away"
JOHN DRINKWATER: We Willed it Not
LIEUTENANT-COLONEL SIR RONALD ROSS: The Death of Peace
FLORENCE EARLE COATES: In War-Time
LAURENCE BINYON: The Anvil
WALTER DE LA MARE: The Fool Rings his Bells
JOHN FINLEY: The Road to Dieppe
W. MACNEILE DIXON: To Fellow Travellers in Greece
AUSTIN DOBSON: "When there is Peace"
ALFRED NOYES: A Prayer in Time of War
THOMAS HARDY: Then and Now
BARRY PAIN: The Kaiser and God
ROBERT GRANT: The Superman
EVERARD OWEN: Three Hills
XIV. INCIDENTS AND ASPECTS
JOHN FREEMAN: The Return
GRACE FALLOW NORTON: The Mobilization in Brittany
SIR HENRY NEWBOLT: The Toy Band
SIR OWEN SEAMAN: Thomas of the Light Heart
MAURICE HEWLETT: In the Trenches
SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE: The Guards Came Through
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS: The Passengers of a Retarded Submersible
LAURENCE BUTTON: Edith Cavell
HERBERT KAUFMAN: The Hell-Gate of Soissons
GEORGE HERBERT CLARKE: The Virgin of Albert
WILFRID WILSON GIBSON: Retreat
SIR HENRY NEWBOLT: A Letter from the Front
GRACE HAZARD CONKLING: Rheims Cathedral—1914
XV. POETS MILITANT
ALAN SEEGER: I Have a Rendezvous with Death
LIEUTENANT RUPERT BROOKE: The Soldier
CAPTAIN CHARLES HAMILTON SORLEY: Expectans Expectavi
LIEUTENANT HERBERT ASQUITH: The Volunteer
CAPTAIN JULIAN GRENFELL: Into Battle
JAMES NORMAN HALL: The Cricketers of Flanders
CAPTAIN CHARLES HAMILTON SORLEY: "All the Hills and Vales Along"
CAPTAIN JAMES H. KNIGHT-ADKIN: No Man's Land
ALAN SEEGER: Champagne, 1914-15
CAPTAIN GILBERT FRANKAU: Headquarters
LIEUTENANT E. WYNDHAM TENNANT: Home Thoughts from Laventie
LIEUTENANT ROBERT ERNEST VERNÈDE: A Petition
ROBERT NICHOLS: Fulfilment
The Day's March
LIEUTENANT FREDERIC MANNING: The Sign
The Trenches
LIEUTENANT HENRY WILLIAM HUTCHINSON: Sonnets
CAPTAIN J. E. STEWART: The Messines Road
PRIVATE A. N. FIELD: The Challenge of the Guns
LIEUTENANT GEOFFREY HOWARD: The Beach Road by the Wood
SERGEANT JOSEPH LEE: German Prisoners
SERGEANT LESLIE COULSON: "—But a Short Time to Live"
LIEUTENANT W. N. HODGSON: Before Action
LIEUTENANT DYNELEY HUSSEY: Courage
LIEUTENANT A. VICTOR RATCLIFFE: Optimism
MAJOR SYDNEY OSWALD: The Battlefield
CAPTAIN JAMES H. KNIGHT-ADKIN: "On Les Aura!"
CORPORAL ALEXANDER ROBERTSON: To an Old Lady
Seen at a Guest-House for Soldiers
LIEUTENANT GILBERT WATERHOUSE: The Casualty
Clearing Station
LANCE-CORPORAL MALCOLM HEMPHREY: Hills of Home
XVI. AUXILIARIES
JOHN FINLEY: The Red Cross Spirit Speaks
WINIFRED M. LETTS: Chaplain to the Forces
EDEN PHILLPOTTS: Song of the Red Cross
LAURENCE BINYON: The Healers
THOMAS L. MARSON: The Red Cross Nurses
XVII. KEEPING THE SEAS
ALFRED NOYES: Kilmeny
RUDYARD KIPLING: The Mine-Sweepers
HENRY VAN DYKE: Mare Liberum
LIEUTENANT PAUL BEWSHER: The Dawn Patrol
REGINALD MCINTOSH CLEVELAND: Destroyers off Jutland
C. FOX SMITH: British Merchant Service
XVIII. THE WOUNDED
WINIFRED M. LETTS: To a Soldier in Hospital
WILFRID WILSON GIBSON: Between the Lines
ROBERT HAVEN SCHAUFFLER: The White Comrade
ROBERT W. SERVICE: Fleurette
ROBERT FROST: Not to Keep
XIX. THE FALLEN
LIEUTENANT RUPERT BROOKE: The Dead
JOHN MASEFIELD: The Island of Skyros
LAURENCE BINYON: For the Fallen
CAPTAIN CHARLES HAMILTON SORLEY: Two Sonnets
WALTER DE LA MARE: "How Sleep the Brave!"
EDWARD VERRALL LUCAS: The Debt
CANON AND MAJOR FREDERICK GEORGE SCOTT: Requiescant
LIEUTENANT ROBERT ERNEST VERNÈDE: To our Fallen
KATHARINE TYNAN: The Old Soldier
ROBERT BRIDGES: Lord Kitchener
JOHN HELSTON: Kitchener
LIEUTENANT HERBERT ASQUITH: The Fallen Subaltern
F. W. BOURDILLON: The Debt Unpayable
WILFRID WILSON GIBSON: The Messages
G. ROSTREVOR HAMILTON: A Cross in Flanders
HERMANN HAGEDORN: Resurrection
OSCAR C. A. CHILD: To a Hero
MORAY DALTON: Rupert Brooke (In Memoriam)
FRANCIS BICKLEY: The Players
CHARLES ALEXANDER RICHMOND: A Song
XX. WOMEN AND WAR
JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY: Harvest Moon
JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY: Harvest Moon: 1916
ADA TYRRELL: My Son
KATHARINE TYNAN: To the Others
GRACE FALLOW NORTON: The Journey
MARGARET PETERSON: A Mother's Dedication
EDEN PHILLPOTTS: To a Mother
SARA TEASDALE: Spring In War-Time
OCCASIONAL NOTES
INDEXES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Editor desires to express his cordial appreciation of the assistance rendered him in his undertaking by the officials of the British Museum (Mr. F.D. Sladen, in particular); Professor W. Macneile Dixon, of the University of Glasgow; Professor Kemp Smith, of Princeton University; Miss Esther C. Johnson, of Needham, Massachusetts; and Mr. Francis Bickley, of London. He wishes also to acknowledge the courtesies generously extended by the following authors, periodicals, and publishers in granting permission for the use of the poems indicated, rights in which are in each case reserved by the owner of the copyright:—
Mr. Francis Bickley and the Westminster Gazette:—"The Players."
Mr. F.W. Bourdillon and the Spectator:—"The Debt Unpayable."
Dr. Robert Bridges and the London Times:—"Lord Kitchener," and "To the United States of America."
Mr. Dana Burnet and the New York Evening Sun:—"The Battle of Liège."
Mr. Wilfred Campbell and the Ottawa Evening Journal:—"Langemarck at
Ypres."
Mr. Patrick R. Chalmers and Punch:—"Guns of Verdun."
Mr. Cecil Chesterton and The New Witness:—"France."
Mr. Oscar C.A. Child and Harper's Magazine:—"To a Hero."
Mr. Reginald McIntosh Cleveland and the New York Times:—"Destroyers off Jutland."
Miss Charlotte Holmes Crawford and Scribner's Magazine:—"Vive la
France!"
Mr. Moray Dalton and the Spectator:—"Rupert Brooke."
Lord Desborough and the London Times:—"Into Battle," by the late
Captain Julian Grenfell.
Professor W. Macneile Dixon and the London Times:—"To Fellow
Travellers in Greece,"
Mr. Austin, Dobson and the Spectator:—"'When There Is Peace;'"
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the London Times:—"The Guards Came
Through."
Mr. John Finley and the Atlantic Monthly:—"The Road to Dieppe"; Mr.
Finley, the American Red Cross, and the Red Cross Magazine:—"The Red
Cross Spirit Speaks."
Mr. John Freeman and the Westminster Gazette:—"The Return."
Mr. Robert Frost and the Yale Review:—"Not to Keep."
Mr. John Galsworthy and the Westminster Gazette:—"England to Free
Men"; Mr. Galsworthy and the London Chronicle:—"Russia—America."
Mrs. Theodosia Garrison and Scribner's Magazine:—"The Soul of Jeanne d'Arc."
Lady Glenconner and the London Times:—"Home Thoughts from Laventie," by the late Lieutenant E. Wyndham Tennant.
Mr. Robert Grant and the Nation (New York):—"The Superman."
Mr. Hermann Hagedorn and the Century Magazine:—"Resurrection."
Mr. James Norman Hall and the Spectator:—"The Cricketers of
Flanders."
Mr. Thomas Hardy and the London Times:—"Men Who March Away," and
"Then and Now."
Mr. John Helston and the English Review:—"Kitchener."
Mr. Maurice Hewlett:—"In the Trenches," from Sing-Songs of the War
(The Poetry Bookshop).
Dr. A. E. Hillard:—"The Dawn Patrol," by Lieutenant Paul Bewsher.
Mrs. Katharine Tynan Hinkson:—"To the Others" and "The Old Soldier."
Mrs. Florence T. Holt and the Atlantic Monthly:—"England and
America."
Mr. William Dean Howells and the North American Review:—"The
Passengers of a Retarded Submersible."
Lady Hutchinson:—"Sonnets," by the late Lieutenant Henry William
Hutchinson.
Mr. Robert Underwood Johnson:—"To Russia New and Free," from Poems of
War and Peace, published by the author.
Mr. Rudyard Kipling:—"The Choice"; "'For All we Have and Are'"; and
"The Mine-Sweepers." (Copyright, 1914, 1915, 1917, by Rudyard Kipling.)
Captain James H. Knight-Adkin and the Spectator;—"No Man's Land" and "On Les Aura!"
Sergeant Joseph Lee and the Spectator:—"German Prisoners."
Mr. E. V. Lucas and the Sphere:—"The Debt."
Mr. Walter de la Mare and the London Times:—"'How Sleep the Brave!'";
Mr. de la Mare and the Westminster Gazette:—"The Fool Rings his
Bells."
Mr. Edward Marsh, literary executor of the late Rupert Brooke:—"The
Soldier" and "The Dead."
Mr. Thomas L. Masson:—"The Red Cross Nurses," from the Red Cross
Magazine.
Lieutenant Charles Langbridge Morgan and the Westminster Gazette:—"To
America."
Sir Henry Newbolt:—"The Vigil"; "The War Films"; "The Toy Band," and "A
Letter from the Front."
Mr. Alfred Noyes:—"Princeton, May, 1917"; "The Searchlights" (London Times), "A Prayer in Time of War" (London Daily Mail), and "Kilmeny."
Mr. Will H. Ogilvie:—"Canadians."
Mr. Barry Pain and the London Times:—"The Kaiser and God."
Miss Marjorie Pickthall and the London Times:—"Canada to England."
Canon H.D. Dawnsley and the Westminster Gazette:—"At St. Paul's,
April 20, 1917."
Dr. Charles Alexander Richmond:—"A Song."
Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Ronald Ross and the Poetry Review:—"The Death of Peace."
Mr. Robert Haven Schauffler:—"The White Comrade."
Mr. W. Snow and the Spectator:—"Oxford in War-Time."
Mrs. Grace Ellery Channing Stetson and the New York Tribune:—"Qui
Vive?"
Mr. Rowland Thirlmere and the Poetry Review:—"Jimmy Doane."
Mrs. Ada Turrell and the Saturday Review:—"My Son."
Dr. Henry van Dyke and the London Times:—"Liberty Enlightening the
World," and "Mare Liberum"; Dr. van Dyke and the Art World: "The
Name of France."
Mr. Tertius van Dyke and the Spectator:—"Oxford Revisited in
War-Time."
Mrs. Edith Wharton:—"Belgium," from King Albert's Book (Hearst's
International Library Company).
Mr. George Edward Woodberry and the Boston Herald:—"On the Italian
Front, MCMXVI"; Mr. Woodberry, the New York Times and the North
American Review:—"Sonnets Written in the Fall of 1914."
The Athenaeum:—"A Cross in Flanders," by G. Rostrevor Hamilton.
The Poetry Review:—"The Messines Road," by Captain J.E. Stewart; "— But a Short Time to Live," by the late Sergeant Leslie Coulson.
The Spectator:—"The Challenge of the Guns," by Private A.N. Field.
The London Times:—"To Our Fallen" and "A Petition," by the late
Lieutenant Robert Ernest Vernède.
The Westminster Gazette:—"Lines Written in Surrey, 1917," by George
Herbert Clarke.
Messrs. Barse & Hopkins:—"Fleurette," by Robert W. Service.
The Cambridge University Press and Professor William R. Sorley:— "Expectans Expectavi"; "'All the Hills and Vales Along,'" and "Two Sonnets," by the late Captain Charles Hamilton Sorley, from Marlborough and Other Poems.
Messrs. Chatto & Windus:—"Fulfilment" and "The Day's March," by Robert
Nichols.
Messrs. Constable & Company:—"Pro Patria," "Thomas of the Light Heart," and "To Belgium in Exile," by Sir Owen Seaman, from War-Time; "To France" and "Requiescant," by Canon and Major Frederick George Scott, from In the Battle Silences.
Messrs. E. P. Dutton & Company:—"To a Soldier in Hospital" (the Spectator); "Chaplain to the Forces" and "The Spires of Oxford" (Westminster Gazette), by Winifred M. Letts, from Hallowe'en, and Poems of the War; "A Chant of Love for England," by Helen Gray Cone, from A Chant of Love for England, and Other Poems (published also by J.M. Dent & Sons, Limited, London).
Lawrence J. Gomme:—"Italy in Arms," by Clinton Scollard, from Italy in
Arms, and Other Poems.
Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Company:—"To the Belgians"; "Men of Verdun";
"The Anvil"; "Edith Cavell"; "The Healers" and "For the Fallen," by
Laurence Binyon, from The Cause (published also by Elkin Mathews,
London, in The Anvil and The Winnowing Fan); "Headquarters," by
Captain Gilbert Frankau, from A Song of the Guns; "Place de la
Concorde" and "In War-Time," by Florence Earle Coates, from The
Collected Poems of Florence Earle Coates; "Harvest Moon" and "Harvest
Moon, 1915," by Josephine Preston Peabody, from Harvest Moon; "The
Mobilization in Brittany" and "The Journey," by Grace Fallow Norton,
from Roads, and "Rheims Cathedral—1914," by Grace Hazard Conkling,
from Afternoons of April.
John Lane:—"The Kaiser and Belgium," by the late Stephen Phillips.
The John Lane Company:—"The Wife of Flanders," by Gilbert K.
Chesterton, from Poems (published also by Messrs. Burns and Gates,
London); "The Soldier," and "The Dead," by the late Lieutenant Rupert
Brooke, from The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke (published also by
Messrs. Sidgwick & Jackson, London, in 19l4, and Other Poems).
Erskine Macdonald:—The following poems from Soldier Poets:—"The
Beach Road by the Wood," by Lieutenant Geoffrey Howard; "Before Action,"
by the late Lieutenant W.N. Hodgson ("Edward Melbourne"); "Courage," by
Lieutenant Dyneley Hussey; "Optimism," by Lieutenant A. Victor
Ratcliffe; "The Battlefield," by Major Sidney Oswald; "To an Old Lady
Seen at a Guest-House for Soldiers," by Corporal Alexander Robertson;
"The Casualty Clearing Station," by Lieutenant Gilbert Waterhouse; and
"Hills of Home," by Lance-Corporal Malcolm Hemphrey.
The Macmillan Company:—"To Belgium"; "Verdun"; "To a Mother," and "Song of the Red Cross," by Eden Phillpotts, from Plain Song, 1914-1916 (published also by William Heinemann, London); "The Island of Skyros," by John Masefield; "Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight," from The Congo and Other Poems, by Vachel Lindsay; "O Glorious France," by Edgar Lee Masters, from Songs and Satires; "Christmas, 1915," from Poems and Plays, by Percy MacKaye; "The Hellgate of Soissons," by Herbert Kaufman, from The Hellgate of Soissons; "Spring in War-Time," by Sara Teasdale, from Rivers to the Sea; and "Retreat," "The Messages," and "Between the Lines," by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson.
Messrs. Macmillan & Company:—"Australia to England," by Archibald T.
Strong, from Sonnets of the Empire, and "Men Who March Away," by
Thomas Hardy, from Satires of Circumstance.
Elkin Mathews:—"The British Merchant Service" (the Spectator), by C.
Fox Smith, from The Naval Crown.
John Murray:—"The Sign," and "The Trenches," by Lieutenant Frederic
Manning.
The Princeton University Press:—"To France," by Herbert Jones, from A
Book of Princeton Verse.
Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons:—"I Have a Rendezvous with Death," and
"Champagne, 1914-1915," by the late Alan Seeger, from Poems.
Messrs. Sherman, French & Company:—"The William P. Frye" (New York
Times), by Jeanne Robert Foster, from Wild Apples.
Messrs. Sidgwick & Jackson:—"We Willed It Not" (The Sphere), by John
Drinkwater; "Three Hills" (London Times), by Everard Owen, from Three
Hills, and Other Poems; "The Volunteer," and "The Fallen Subaltern," by
Lieutenant Herbert Asquith, from The Volunteer, and Other Poems.
Messrs. Truslove and Hanson:—"A Mother's Dedication," by Margaret
Peterson, from The Women's Message.
INTRODUCTION
Because man is both militant and pacific, he has expressed in literature, as indeed in the other forms of art, his pacific and militant moods. Nor are these moods, of necessity, incompatible. War may become the price of peace, and peace may so decay as inevitably to bring about war. Of the dully unresponsive pacificist and the jingo patriot, quick to anger, the latter no doubt is the more dangerous to the cause of true freedom, yet both are "undesirable citizens." He who believes that peace is illusory and spurious, unless it be based upon justice and liberty, will be proud to battle, if battle he must, for the sake of those foundations.
For the most part, the poetry of war, undertaken in this spirit, has touched and exalted such special qualities as patriotism, courage, self- sacrifice, enterprise, and endurance. Where it has tended to glorify war in itself, it is chiefly because war has released those qualities, so to speak, in stirring and spectacular ways; and where it has chosen to round upon war and to upbraid it, it is because war has slain ardent and lovable youths and has brought misery and despair to women and old people. But the war poet has left the mere arguments to others. For himself, he has seen and felt. Envisaging war from various angles, now romantically, now realistically, now as the celebrating chronicler, now as the contemplative interpreter, but always in a spirit of catholic curiosity, he has sung, the fall of Troy, the Roman adventures, the mediaeval battles and crusades, the fields of Agincourt and Waterloo, and the more modern revolutions. Since Homer, he has spoken with martial eloquence through, the voices of Drayton, Spenser, Marlowe, Webster, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Scott, Burns, Campbell, Tennyson, Browning, the New England group, and Walt Whitman,—to mention only a few of the British and American names,—and he speaks sincerely and powerfully to-day in the writings of Kipling. Hardy, Masefield, Binyon, Newbolt, Watson, Rupert Brooke, and the two young soldiers—the one English, the other American—who have lately lost their lives while on active service: Captain Charles Hamilton Sorley, who was killed at Hulluch, October 18, 1915; and Alan Seeger, who fell, mortally wounded, during the charge on Belloy-en-Santerre, July 4, 1916.
There can be little doubt that these several minds and spirits, stirred by the passion and energy of war, and reacting sensitively both to its cruelties and to its pities, have experienced the kinship of quickened insight and finer unselfishness in the face of wide-ranging death. They have silently compared, perhaps, the normal materialistic conventions in business, politics, education, and religion, with the relief from those conventions that nearly all soldiers and many civilians experience in time of war; for although war has its too gross and ugly side, it has not dared to learn that inflexibility of custom and conduct that deadens the spirit into a tame submission. This strange rebound and exaltation would seem to be due less to the physical realities of war—which must in many ways cramp and constrain the individual—than to the relative spiritual freedom engendered by the needs of war, if they are to be successfully met. The man of war has an altogether unusual opportunity to realize himself, to cleanse and heal himself through the mastering of his physical fears; through the facing of his moral doubts; through the reëxamination of whatever thoughts he may have possessed, theretofore, about life and death and the universe; and through the quietly unselfish devotion he owes to the welfare of his fellows and to the cause of his native land.
Into the stuff of his thought and utterance, whether he be on active service or not, the poet-interpreter of war weaves these intentions, and coöperates with his fellows in building up a little higher and better, from time to time, that edifice of truth for whose completion can be spared no human experience, no human hope.
As already suggested, English and American literatures have both received genuine accessions, even thus early, arising out of the present great conflict, and we may be sure that other equally notable contributions will be made. The present Anthology contains a number of representative poems produced by English-speaking men and women. The editorial policy has been humanly hospitable, rather than academically critical, especially in the case of some of the verses written by soldiers at the Front, which, however slight in certain instances their technical merit may be, are yet psychologically interesting as sincere transcripts of personal experience, and will, it is thought, for that very reason, peculiarly attract and interest the reader. It goes without saying that there are several poems in this group which conspicuously succeed also as works of art. For the rest, the attempt has been made, within such limitations as have been experienced, to present pretty freely the best of what has been found available in contemporary British and American war verse. It must speak for itself, and the reader will find that in not a few instances it does so with sensitive sympathy and with living power; sometimes, too, with that quietly intimate companionableness which we find in Gray's Elegy, and which John Masefield, while lecturing in America in 1916, so often indicated as a prime quality in English poetry. But if this quality appears in Chaucer and the pre-Romantics and Wordsworth, it appears also in Longfellow and Lowell, in Emerson and Lanier, and in William Vaughn Moody; for American poetry is, after all, as English poetry,—"with a difference,"—sprung from the same sources, and coursing along similar channels.
The new fellowship of the two great Anglo-Saxon nations which a book of this character may, to a degree, illustrate, is filled with such high promise for both of them, and for all civilization, that it is perhaps hardly too much to say, with Ambassador Walter H. Page, in his address at the Pilgrims' Dinner in London, April 12, 1917: "We shall get out of this association an indissoluble companionship, and we shall henceforth have indissoluble mutual duties for mankind. I doubt if there could be another international event comparable in large value and in long consequences to this closer association." Mr. Balfour struck the same note when, during his mission to the United States, he expressed himself in these words: "That this great people should throw themselves whole- heartedly into this mighty struggle, prepared for all efforts and sacrifices that may be required to win success for this most righteous cause, is an event at once so happy and so momentous that only the historian of the future will be able, as I believe, to measure its true proportions."
The words of these eminent men ratify in the field of international politics the hopeful anticipation which Tennyson expressed in his poem, Hands all Round, as it appeared in the London Examiner, February 7, 1852:—
"Gigantic daughter of the West,
We drink to thee across the flood,
We know thee most, we love thee best,
For art thou not of British blood?
Should war's mad blast again be blown,
Permit not thou the tyrant powers
To fight thy mother here alone,
But let thy broadsides roar with ours.
Hands all round!
God the tyrant's cause confound!
To our great kinsmen of the West, my friends,
And the great name of England, round and round.
"O rise, our strong Atlantic sons,
When war against our freedom springs!
O speak to Europe through your guns!
They can be understood by kings.
You must not mix our Queen with those
That wish to keep their people fools;
Our freedom's foemen are her foes,
She comprehends the race she rules.
Hands all round!
God the tyrant's cause confound!
To our dear kinsmen of the West, my friends,
And the great cause of Freedom, round and round."
They ratify also the spirit of those poems in the present volume which seek to interpret to Britons and Americans their deepening friendship. "Poets," said Shelley, "are the unacknowledged legislators of the world," and he meant by legislation the guidance and determination of the verdicts of the human soul.
G. H. C.
August, 1917
THE CHOICE
THE AMERICAN SPIRIT SPEAKS:
To the Judge of Right and Wrong
With Whom fulfillment lies
Our purpose and our power belong,
Our faith and sacrifice.
Let Freedom's land rejoice!
Our ancient bonds are riven;
Once more to us the eternal choice
Of good or ill is given.
Not at a little cost,
Hardly by prayer or tears,
Shall we recover the road we lost
In the drugged and doubting years,
But after the fires and the wrath,
But after searching and pain,
His Mercy opens us a path
To live with ourselves again.
In the Gates of Death rejoice!
We see and hold the good—
Bear witness, Earth, we have made our choice
For Freedom's brotherhood.
Then praise the Lord Most High
Whose Strength hath saved us whole,
Who bade us choose that the Flesh should die
And not the living Soul!
Rudyard Kipling
"LIBERTY ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD"
Thou warden of the western gate, above Manhattan Bay,
The fogs of doubt that hid thy face are driven clean away:
Thine eyes at last look far and clear, thou liftest high thy hand
To spread the light of liberty world-wide for every land.
No more thou dreamest of a peace reserved alone for thee,
While friends are fighting for thy cause beyond the guardian sea:
The battle that they wage is thine; thou fallest if they fall;
The swollen flood of Prussian pride will sweep unchecked o'er all.
O cruel is the conquer-lust in Hohenzollern brains:
The paths they plot to gain their goal are dark with shameful stains:
No faith they keep, no law revere, no god but naked Might;—
They are the foemen of mankind. Up, Liberty, and smite!
Britain, and France, and Italy, and Russia newly born,
Have waited for thee in the night. Oh, come as comes the morn.
Serene and strong and full of faith, America, arise,
With steady hope and mighty help to join thy brave Allies.
O dearest country of my heart, home of the high desire,
Make clean thy soul for sacrifice on Freedom's altar-fire:
For thou must suffer, thou must fight, until the warlords cease,
And all the peoples lift their heads in liberty and peace.
Henry van Dyke
April 10, 1917
TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Brothers in blood! They who this wrong began
To wreck our commonwealth, will rue the day
When first they challenged freemen to the fray,
And with the Briton dared the American.
Now are we pledged to win the Rights of man;
Labour and Justice now shall have their way,
And in a League of Peace—God grant we may—
Transform the earth, not patch up the old plan.
Sure is our hope since he who led your nation
Spake for mankind, and ye arose in awe
Of that high call to work the world's salvation;
Clearing your minds of all estranging blindness
In the vision of Beauty and the Spirit's law,
Freedom and Honour and sweet Lovingkindness.
Robert Bridges
April 30, 1917