While you are listening To the clear horn, Forget, men, everything On this earth newborn, Except that it is lovelier Than any mysteries. Open your eyes to the air That has washed the eyes of the stars Through all the dewy night: Up with the light, To the old wars; Arise, arise! In reading Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, Alan Seeger, we recognize how much greater were the things they sacrificed than the creature comforts ordinarily emphasized in the departure from home to the trenches; these men gave up their imagination. A thoroughly representative poem by Edward Thomas is _Cock-Crow_; beauty of conception mingled with the inevitable touch of homeliness at the end. Out of the wood of thoughts that grows by night To be cut down by the sharp axe of light,-- Out of the night, two cocks together crow, Cleaving the darkness with a silver blow: And bright before my eyes twin trumpeters stand, Heralds of splendour, one at either hand, Each facing each as in a coat of arms; The milkers lace their boots up at the farms. This is his favourite combination, seen on every page of his work,--fancy and fact. Another poet in khaki who writes powerful and original verse is Robert Nichols (born 1893), an Oxford man who has already produced two volumes--_Invocation_, and, in 1918, _Ardours and Endurances_. Accompanying the second is a portrait made in 1915, exhibiting the face of a dreamy-looking boy. No one who reads the pages of this book can doubt the author's gift. In his trench-poetry he somehow manages to combine the realism of Barbusse with an almost holy touch of imagination; and some of the most beautiful pieces are manly laments for friends killed in battle. He was himself severely wounded. His poems of strenuous action are mostly too long to quote; occasionally he writes in a more quiet mood of contemplation. THE FULL HEART Alone on the shore in the pause of the nighttime I stand and I hear the long wind blow light; I view the constellations quietly, quietly burning; I hear the wave fall in the hush of the night. Long after I am dead, ended this bitter journey, Many another whose heart holds no light Shall your solemn sweetness hush, awe, and comfort, O my companions, Wind, Waters, Stars, and Night. Other Oxford poets from the front are Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves and Willoughby Weaving, whose two volumes _The Star Fields_ and _The Bubble_ are as original in their way as the work of Mr. Nichols, though inferior in beauty of expression. Mr. Weaving was invalided home in 1915, and his first book has an introduction by Robert Bridges. In _The Bubble_ (1917) there are many poems so deeply meditative that their full force does not reach one until after repeated readings. He has also a particular talent for the last line. TO ---- (Winter 1916)