O Flag of sacrifice and chivalry, Never before so dear! Your holy red Dyed with the blood of hero-friends; your white Clear like their vision; and your starry field Steadfast with life devotion! Not again, I think, shall I look out upon the world But through the folds of your eternal glory. Flash your fair challenge still across my window, Flag of my Country! THREE GOLDEN STARS (IN MEMORY OF THREE RADCLIFFE GIRLS WHO DIED IN SERVICE ABROAD; RUTH HOLDEN, ’11; LUCY N. FLETCHER, ’10; AND HELEN HOMANS) Lucy, Helen, Ruth! Sweet names they have, Our brave young soldiers, womanly and kind! Sweet as the glorious youth of heart and mind, The years of promise they so gladly gave. And they have wound the ribbon of their love About and through the nations sundered far, Drawing them close; each with a golden Star Setting her seal on bonds that time shall prove. For one, a Briton born and Island bred, Chose for America to serve, and bless Our wounded with her strength and steadfastness. She sleeps in France among her Yankee dead. One of New England, back to England gave The treasure of her wisdom and her skill, To use for hapless refugees, who still Are weeping by her lonely Russian grave. And one has won a hero’s _Croix de Guerre_, “_Morte pour La France_,” so honoring a debt. Our sister nation never will forget The foreign Saint who gave her soldiers care. Oh, greater love hath no man shown than they, The dear, bright spirits with the radiant eyes, Fearlessly venturing the great emprise, Cheerfully pacing down the dolorous way! So, never deem their golden web unspun, Blighted the hope, and lost the precious dower! For Three have died to speed the blessed hour When Truth and Love make all the nations one. THE SPRING OF THE YEAR On fields of France the violets are fair, The skylarks sing above the broad champaign; But where are they who walked and listened there, The hero-lads our spring finds not again? They leave to us who did not share the fight, The earth’s expectancy of green delight. Nay! They have journeyed to a sweeter bourne, Where ghosts of all the garnered springs survive, With all earth-joys that never will return, And all the flowers that ever were alive; Where bird-songs that have echoed through the years Make harmony too sweet for mortal ears.