Fool that I was: my heart was sore, Yea sick for the myriad wounded men, The maim’d in the war: I had grief for each one: And I came in the gay September sun To the open smile of Trafalgar Square; Where many a lad with a limb fordone Loll’d by the lion-guarded column That holdeth Nelson statued thereon Upright in the air. The Parliament towers and the Abbey towers, The white Horseguards and grey Whitehall, He looketh on all, Past Somerset House and the river’s bend To the pillar’d dome of St. Paul, That slumbers confessing God’s solemn blessing On England’s glory, to keep it ours-- While children true her prowess renew And throng from the ends of the earth to defend Freedom and honour--till Earth shall end. The gentle unjealous Shakespeare, I trow, In his country tomb of peaceful fame, Must feel exiled from life and glow If he think of this man with his warrior claim, Who looketh o’er London as if ’twere his own, As he standeth in stone, aloft and alone, Sailing the sky with one arm and one eye. CHRISTMAS EVE, 1917 Many happy returns, sweet Babe, of the day! Didst not thou sow good seed in the world, thy field? Cam’st thou to save the poor? Thy poor yet pine. Thousands to-day suffer death-pangs like thine; Our jewels of life are spilt on the ground as dross; Ten thousand mothers stand beneath the cross. _Peace to men of goodwill_ was the angels’ song: Now there is fiercer war, worse filth and wrong. If thou didst sow good seed, is this the yield? Shall not thy folk be quell’d in dead dismay? Nay, with a larger hope we are fed and heal’d Than e’er was reveal’d to the saints who died so strong; For while men slept the seed had quicken’d unseen. England is as a field whereon the corn is green. Of trial and dark tribulation this vision is born-- Britain as a field green with the springing corn. While we slumber’d the seed was growing unseen. Happy returns of the day, dear Babe, we say. ENGLAND has buried her sins with her fathers’ bones. Thou shalt be throned on the ruin of kingly thrones. The wish of thine heart is rooted in carnal mind; For good seed didst thou sow in the world thy field: It shall ripen in gold and harvest an hundredfold. Peace shall come as a flood upon all mankind; Love shall comfort and succour the poor that are pined. Wherever our gentle children are wander’d and sped, Simple apostles thine of the world to come, They carried the living seed of the living Bread. The angel-song and the gospel of Christendom, That while the nation slept was springing unseen.