A Treasury of War Poetry by Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
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Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke >> A Treasury of War Poetry
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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. LIEGE
STEPHEN PHILLIPS: The Kaiser and Belgium
DANA BURNET: The Battle of Liege
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 VERNEDE: 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 VERNEDE: 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 Liege."
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 Vernede.
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
reexamination 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
cooeperates 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."
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