For natural mindsight, triumphing in the act Over the throes of artificial rage, Has thuswise muffled victory’s peal of pride, Rended to ribands policy’s specious page That deals but with evasion, code, and pact, And war’s apology wholly stultified. 1915. THEN AND NOW WHEN battles were fought With a chivalrous sense of Should and Ought, In spirit men said, “End we quick or dead, Honour is some reward! Let us fight fair—for our own best or worst; So, Gentlemen of the Guard, Fire first!” In the open they stood, Man to man in his knightlihood: They would not deign To profit by a stain On the honourable rules, Knowing that practise perfidy no man durst Who in the heroic schools Was nurst. But now, behold, what Is warfare wherein honour is not! Rama laments Its dead innocents: Herod breathes: “Sly slaughter Shall rule! Let us, by modes once called accurst, Overhead, under water, Stab first.” 1915. A CALL TO NATIONAL SERVICE UP and be doing, all who have a hand To lift, a back to bend. It must not be In times like these that vaguely linger we To air our vaunts and hopes; and leave our land Untended as a wild of weeds and sand. —Say, then, “I come!” and go, O women and men Of palace, ploughshare, easel, counter, pen; That scareless, scathless, England still may stand. Would years but let me stir as once I stirred At many a dawn to take the forward track, And with a stride plunged on to enterprize, I now would speed like yester wind that whirred Through yielding pines; and serve with never a slack, So loud for promptness all around outcries! _March_ 1917. THE DEAD AND THE LIVING ONE THE dead woman lay in her first night’s grave, And twilight fell from the clouds’ concave, And those she had asked to forgive forgave. The woman passing came to a pause By the heaped white shapes of wreath and cross, And looked upon where the other was. And as she mused there thus spoke she: “Never your countenance did I see, But you’ve been a good good friend to me!” Rose a plaintive voice from the sod below: “O woman whose accents I do not know, What is it that makes you approve me so?” “O dead one, ere my soldier went, I heard him saying, with warm intent, To his friend, when won by your blandishment: “‘I would change for that lass here and now! And if I return I may break my vow To my present Love, and contrive somehow “‘To call my own this new-found pearl, Whose eyes have the light, whose lips the curl, I always have looked for in a girl!’ “—And this is why that by ceasing to be— Though never your countenance did I see— You prove you a good good friend to me;