It is called, "The Unnamed Lake." "It sleeps among the thousand hills Where no man ever trod, And only nature's music fills The silences of God. Great mountains tower above its shore, (p. 308) Green rushes fringe its brim, And o'er its breast for evermore The wanton breezes skim. Dark clouds that intercept the sun Go there in Spring to weep, And there, when Autumn days are done, White mists lie down to sleep. Sunrise and sunset crown with gold The peaks of ageless stone, Where winds have thundered from of old And storms have set their throne. No echoes of the world afar Disturb it night or day, But sun and shadow, moon and star Pass and repass for aye. 'Twas in the grey of early dawn, When first the lake we spied, And fragments of a cloud were drawn Half down the mountain side. Along the shore a heron flew, And from a speck on high, That hovered in the deepening blue, We heard the fish-hawk's cry. Among the cloud-capt solitudes, No sound the silence broke, Save when, in whispers down the woods, The guardian mountains spoke. Through tangled brush and dewy brake, Returning whence we came, We passed in silence, and the lake We left without a name." There is not much in the poem, but, like a gramophone record, it carried our minds away into another world. For myself, who remembered the scenery that surrounded me when I wrote it and who now, in that filthy hole, looked at the faces of young men who in two or three hours were to brave death in one of the biggest tasks that had been laid upon us, the words stirred up all sorts of conflicting emotions. The recitation seemed to be so well received that I ventured on another--in fact several more--and then I noticed a curious thing. It was the preternatural silence of my audience. Generally speaking, when I recited my poems, one of the officers would suddenly remember he had to dictate a letter, or a despatch rider would come in with orders. Now, no one stirred. I paused in the middle of a poem and looked round to see what was the matter, and there to my astonishment, I found (p. 309) that everyone, except the young Intelligence Officer, was sound asleep. It was the best thing that could have happened and I secretly consoled myself with the reflection that the one who was unable to sleep was the officer who specialized in intelligence. We both laughed quietly, and then I whispered to him, "We had better go and find some place where we, too, can get a little rest." He climbed over the prostrate forms and followed me down the passage to a little excavation where the Germans had started to make a new passage. We lay down side by side on the wooden floor, and I was just beginning to succumb to the soothing influences of my own poetry, when I thought I felt little things crawling over my face. It was too much for me. I got up and