Mrs. Moodie’s modest estimate of her martial lyrics is not just to the poet. They are better than mere ‘loyal staves,’ fitted solely to ‘amuse’ casual readers. That they were widely circulated and sung throughout Canada at the time when they were needed, is proof that they possessed lyrical eloquence and the inspirational power to stir the heart and impel the will to honorable action. They are good singing verse, but they are not genuine poetry. All that is required in an inspirational war lyric is that it come warm from the heart and hand; that it be human, manly, direct in thought; that it be ringing in lilt and swinging in rhythm; and that it be respectable technically as verse. To write martial verse that fulfils all these requirements and to write it immediately on demand is no easy task. Judged by these standards Mrs. Moodie excelled in inspirational war lyricism. It is true that Harriet A. Wilkins, Mrs. Curzon, Mrs. Annie Rothwell-Christie, Valancy Crawford, and Agnes Machar surpassed her in poetic war lyricism. But this was due to the fact that their best martial verse was commemorative, and was written _after_ the deeds or events celebrated by them, and at a time when they could compose in peace and at leisure. Of these later Canadian women poets of martial verse the supreme artist was Mrs. Annie Rothwell-Christie. The verse of the others, even Isabella Valancy Crawford’s novel _The Rose of a Nation’s Thanks_, and Agnes Maule Machar’s swinging _Our Lads to the Front_, though choicer in diction and imagery than Mrs. Moodie’s, hardly rise above the quality of good verse. Mrs. Annie Rothwell-Christie’s commemorative martial verse on the other hand, attains to the dignity and beauty of pure poetry. We do not need the statement of the English poet Sir Edwin Arnold, that ‘the best war songs of the Half-breed Rebellion were written by Annie Rothwell-Christie.’ Dignity, beauty, melody and compelling pathos are in every line she wrote. These qualities can be observed in the lines we quote from her _After the Battle_ and _Welcome Home_, selecting, first, two stanzas from _After the Battle_:— Ay, lay them to rest on the prairie, on the spot where for honor they fell, The shout of the savage their requiem, the hiss of the rifle their knell. • • • • As the blood of the martyr enfruitens his creed, so the hero sows peace And the reaping of war’s deadly harvest is the earnest his havoc shall cease.