For the purpose of just appreciation we remark the fine, spirited, and imaginatively impressive qualities, as well as the artistic finish, of selected Canadian war poems that are really worthy to stand beside the best verse of English and American poets who were inspired by the late war. Aside from McCrae’s _In Flanders Fields_ the most celebrated commemorative war poem by a Canadian is Dr. J. B. Dollard’s sonnet to the memory of Rupert Brooke—a sonnet in which, as English and American critics observed, Dr. Dollard made beautiful use of the supposed cause of Brooke’s death (sunstroke, ‘arrows of Apollo’) and the place of burial in the Aegean. Brooke’s grave is on the island of Scyros, not Lemnos. But the error in fact only enhances the beauty of the poem:— Slain by the arrows of Apollo, lo! The well-belovèd of the Muses lies On Lemnos’ Isle ’neath blue and classic skies, And hears th’ Aegean waters ebb and flow! How strange his beauteous soul should choose to go Out from his body in this hallowed place, Where Poetry and Art’s undying grace Still breathe, and Pipes of Pan melodious blow! Here shall he rest untroubled, knowing well That faithful hearts shall hold his memory dear, Moved to affection weak words cannot tell By his short, splendid life that knew no fear; Beloved of the gods, the gods have ta’en Their Ganymede, by bright Apollo slain! Almost as celebrated as Dr. Dollard’s sonnet to Brooke is Lieutenant Arthur Bourinot’s sonnet to the dead poet-soldier. For the sake of variety in forms we quote _Immortality_—a most winsome, tender lyric; simple, sincere, and convincing—from Lieutenant Bourinot’s _Laurentian Lyrics_ (1915):— They are not dead, the soldier and the sailor, Fallen for Freedom’s sake; They merely sleep with faces that are paler Until they wake. They will not weep, the mothers, in the years The future will decree; For they have died that the battles and the tears Should cease to be. They will not die, the victorious and the slain, Sleeping in foreign soil, They gave their lives, but to the world is the gain Of their sad toil. They are not dead, the soldier and the sailor, Fallen for Freedom’s sake; They merely sleep with faces that are paler Until they wake. The most lilting example of Canadian inspirational war verse is Douglas Durkin’s _The Fighting Men of Canada_. It is spirited and inspiriting. The colloquial diction of the refrains charges it with veracity, vividness, and with ‘the punch’ which the London critic, Mr. E. B. Osborn, desiderates in the content of what are, in his view, the only ‘true war poems,’ namely, ‘song-pictures of the campaigns and of soldiers’ life’:—