It is not that my soul is weighed with woe, But rather wonder, seeing they do but sleep. As birds that in the sinking summer sweep Across the heaven to happier climes to go, So they are gone; and sometimes we must weep, And sometimes, smiling, murmur, "Be it so!" _Henry William Hutchinson_ THE MESSINES ROAD I The road that runs up to Messines Is double-locked with gates of fire, Barred with high ramparts, and between The unbridged river, and the wire. None ever goes up to Messines, For Death lurks all about the town, Death holds the vale as his demesne, And only Death moves up and down. II Choked with wild weeds, and overgrown With rank grass, all torn and rent By war's opposing engines, strewn With débris from each day's event! And in the dark the broken trees, Whose arching boughs were once its shade, Grim and distorted, ghostly ease In groans their souls vexed and afraid. Yet here the farmer drove his cart, Here friendly folk would meet and pass, Here bore the good wife eggs to mart And old and young walked up to Mass. Here schoolboys lingered in the way, Here the bent packman laboured by, And lovers at the end o' the day Whispered their secret blushingly. A goodly road for simple needs, An avenue to praise and paint, Kept by fair use from wreck and weeds, Blessed by the shrine of its own saint. III The road that runs up to Messines! Ah, how we guard it day and night! And how they guard it, who o'erween A stricken people, with their might! But we shall go up to Messines Even thro' that fire-defended gate. Over and thro' all else between And give the highway back its state. _J. E. Stewart_ THE CHALLENGE OF THE GUNS By day, by night, along the lines their dull boom rings, And that reverberating roar its challenge flings. Not only unto thee across the narrow sea, But from the loneliest vale in the last land's heart The sad-eyed watching mother sees her sons depart. And freighted full the tumbling waters of ocean are With aid for England from England's sons afar. The glass is dim; we see not wisely, far, nor well, But bred of English bone, and reared on Freedom's wine, All that we have and are we lay on England's shrine. A. N. Field THE BEACH ROAD BY THE WOOD I know a beach road, A road where I would go, It runs up northward From Cooden Bay to Hoe; And there, in the High Woods, Daffodils grow. And whoever walks along there Stops short and sees, By the moist tree-roots In a clearing of the trees, Yellow great battalions of them, Blowing in the breeze. While the spring sun brightens, And the dull sky clears, They blow their golden trumpets, Those golden trumpeteers! They blow their golden trumpets And they shake their glancing spears. And all the rocking beech-trees Are bright with buds again, And the green and open spaces Are greener after rain, And far to southward one can hear The sullen, moaning rain.