Greybeard philosophy has sought in books And argument this truth, That man is greater than his pain, but you Have learnt it in your youth. You know the wisdom taught by Calvary At twenty-three. Death would have found you brave, but braver still You face each lagging day, A merry Stoic, patient, chivalrous, Divinely kind and gay. You bear your knowledge lightly, graduate Of unkind Fate. Careless philosopher, the first to laugh, The latest to complain. Unmindful that you teach, you taught me this In your long fight with pain: Since God made man so good--here stands my creed-- God's good indeed. _Winifred M. Letts_ BETWEEN THE LINES When consciousness came back, he found he lay Between the opposing fires, but could not tell On which hand were his friends; and either way For him to turn was chancy--bullet and shell Whistling and shrieking over him, as the glare Of searchlights scoured the darkness to blind day. He scrambled to his hands and knees ascare, Dragging his wounded foot through puddled clay, And tumbled in a hole a shell had scooped At random in a turnip-field between The unseen trenches where the foes lay cooped Through that unending-battle of unseen, Dead-locked, league-stretching armies; and quite spent He rolled upon his back within the pit, And lay secure, thinking of all it meant-- His lying in that little hole, sore hit, But living, while across the starry sky Shrapnel and shell went screeching overhead-- Of all it meant that he, Tom Dodd, should lie Among the Belgian turnips, while his bed.... If it were he, indeed, who'd climbed each night, Fagged with the day's work, up the narrow stair, And slipt his clothes off in the candle-light, Too tired to fold them neatly in a chair The way his mother'd taught him--too dog-tired After the long day's serving in the shop, Inquiring what each customer required, Politely talking weather, fit to drop.... And now for fourteen days and nights, at least, He hadn't had his clothes off, and had lain In muddy trenches, napping like a beast With one eye open, under sun and rain And that unceasing hell-fire.... It was strange How things turned out--the chances! You'd just got To take your luck in life, you couldn't change Your luck. And so here he was lying shot Who just six months ago had thought to spend His days behind a counter. Still, perhaps.... And now, God only knew how he would end!