Thus Dawn o'ertook me and with magic speech Made me forget the night as we strode on. Where'er he looked a miracle was wrought: A tree grew from the darkness at a glance; A hut was thatched; a new chateau was reared Of stone, as weathered as the church at Caen; Gray blooms were coloured suddenly in red; A flag was flung across the eastern sky.-- Nearer at hand, he made me then aware Of peasant women bending in the fields, Cradling and gleaning by the first scant light, Their sons and husbands somewhere o'er the edge Of these green-golden fields which they had sowed, But will not reap,--out somewhere on the march, God but knows where and if they come again. One fallow field he pointed out to me Where but the day before a peasant ploughed, Dreaming of next year's fruit, and there his plough Stood now mid-field, his horses commandeered, A monstrous sable crow perched on the beam. Before I knew, the Dawn was on the road, Far from my side, so silently he went, Catching his golden helmet as he ran, And hast'ning on along the dun straight way, Where old men's sabots now began to clack And withered women, knitting, led their cows, On, on to call the men of Kitchener Down to their coasts,--I shouting after him: "O Dawn, would you had let the world sleep on Till all its armament were turned to rust, Nor waked it to this day of hideous hate, Of man's red murder and of woman's woe!" Famished and lame, I came at last to Dieppe, But Dawn had made his way across the sea, And, as I climbed with heavy feet the cliff, Was even then upon the sky-built towers Of that great capital where nations all, Teuton, Italian, Gallic, English, Slav, Forget long hates in one consummate faith. _John Finley_ TO FELLOW TRAVELLERS IN GREECE MARCH-SEPTEMBER, 1914 'T was in the piping tune of peace We trod the sacred soil of Greece, Nor thought, where the Ilissus runs, Of Teuton craft or Teuton guns; Nor dreamt that, ere the year was spent, Their iron challenge insolent Would round the world's horizons pour, From Europe to the Australian shore. The tides of war had ebb'd away From Trachis and Thermopylae, Long centuries had come and gone Since that fierce day at Marathon; Freedom was firmly based, and we Wall'd by our own encircling sea; The ancient passions dead, and men Battl'd with ledger and with pen. So seem'd it, but to them alone The wisdom of the gods is known; Lest freedom's price decline, from far Zeus hurl'd the thunderbolt of war. And so once more the Persian steel The armies of the Greeks must feel, And once again a Xerxes know The virtue of a Spartan foe. Thus may the cloudy fates unroll'd Retrace the starry circles old, And the recurrent heavens decree A Periclean dynasty. _W. Macneile Dixon_ "WHEN THERE IS PEACE" "_When there is Peace our land no more Will be the land we knew of yore._" Thus do our facile seers foretell The truth that none can buy or sell And e'en the wisest must ignore.