Seldom is your home-coming; for aye your pennon flies In unrecorded exploits on the tumultuous wave; Till, in the storm of battle, fast-thundering upon the foe, Ye add your kindred names to the heroes of long-ago, And mid the blasting wrack, in the glad sudden death of the brave, Ye are gone to return no more.--Idly our tears arise; Too proud for praise as ye lie in your unvisited grave, The wide-warring water, under the starry skies. FOR “PAGES INÉDITES,” ETC. _April, 1916._ By our dear sons’ graves, fair France, thou’rt now to us, endear’d; Since no more as of old stand th’ English against thee in fight, But rallying to defend thee they die guarding thy beauty From blind envious Hate and Perfidy leagued with Might. GHELUVELT. EPITAPH ON THE WORCESTERS. OCTOBER 31, 1914. Askest thou of these graves? They’ll tell thee, O stranger, in England How we Worcesters lie where we redeem’d the battle. THE WEST FRONT. AN ENGLISH MOTHER, ON LOOKING INTO MASEFIELD’S “OLD FRONT LINE.” No country know I so well as this landscape of hell. Why bring you to my pain these shadow’d effigys Of barb’d wire, riven trees, the corpse-strewn blasted plain? And the names--Hebuterne Bethune and La Bassée-- I have nothing to learn-- Contalmaison, Boisselle, And one where night and day my heart would pray and dwell; A desert sanctuary, where in holy vigil Year-long I have held my faith against th’ imaginings Of horror and agony in an ordeal above The tears of suffering and took aid of angels: This was the temple of God: no mortuary of kings Ever gathered the spoils of such chivalry and love: No pilgrim shrine soe’er hath assembled such prayer-- With rich incense-wafted ritual and requiem Not beauteous batter’d Rheims nor lorn Jerusalem. TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA _April, 1917._ Brothers in blood! They who this wrong began To wreck our commonwealth, will rue the day When first they challenged freemen to the fray, And with the Briton dared the American. Now are we pledged to win the Rights of man; Labour and justice now shall have their way, And in a League of Peace--God grant we may-- Transform the earth, not patch up the old plan. Sure is our hope since he, who led your nation, Spake for mankind; and ye arose in awe Of that high call to work the world’s salvation; Clearing your minds of all estranging blindness In the vision of Beauty, and the Spirit’s law, Freedom and Honour and sweet Loving-kindness. TRAFALGAR SQUARE _September, 1917._