RECENT WAR POETRY.*

Or the many soldier-poets whose loss we deplore, Lieutenant William Noel Hodgson,' of the 9th Devons, stood in the first rank. After a distinguished career as an athlete and scholar at Durham School, he had gone to Christ Church as an Exhibitioner and taken a First Class in Moderations. He received his commission when the war broke out, was mentioned in despatches and awarded the Military Cross in October, 1915, and fell in the battle of the Somme on July 1st, 1916. His fine poem on "The Hills" appeared in the Spectator of August 23rd, 1913, but there is even a higher spirit and a nobler resolve in the " Reverie " written on route march in Flanders. There are other noble stanzas on • (1) Verse and Prose in Peace and War. By William Noel Hodgson. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. [2s. 8d. net.]—(2) A Gloucestershire Lad at 1107:18 and Abroad. By F. W. Harvey. London: Sidgwick and Jackson. [Is. M. net.}— i

(3) Verses in Peace and War. By Shane Leslie. London: Burns and Oates. [2s: net.]—(4) Wombs Flit, and Other Poems. By E. Wyndham Tennant.

Oxford : B. H. Blackwell. [2s. net.] (6) Songs of Peace By Francis Led- widge. With an Introduction by Lord Dunsany. London: Herbert Jenkins. [33. fid. net.]—(6) The Rhymes of a Red-Cross Man. By Robert W. Service. London: T. Fisher Unwin. [3s. 6d. net.]---{7) Ralf-flour; at Relies. By A. P. Herbert. Oxford: B. H. Blackwell. [Is. net.)—(8) Soldier Songs from Anzac. By Signaller Tom Skeyhill. London: T. Fisher Unwin. [Is. net.]—(9) Soldier Songs. By Patrick MacGill. London: Herbert Jenkins. [3s. M. net.]— (10) Comrades. By Alexander Robertson. London: Elkin Mathews. [is. net.] —(11) In the Battle Silences : Poems Written at the Front. By Frederick George Scott, 1st Canadian Division, B.E.F. London: Constable and Co. (1s. net.]--{12) War Poems. By X." London : Martin Seeker. (28. net.]— (13) The Old Way, and other Poems. By Captain Ronald A. Hopwood, R.N. London : John Murray. [N. PAL net.]—(14) Fillifing Men. By' C. Fox-Smith. London: Elkin Mathews. [Is. net.]—(13) Hallow-E'en and Poems of the War. By W. X. Letts. London : Smith, Elder, and Co. Od. net.]

Durham and its Cathedral—" exceeding wise and strong and full of

years "—and a memorable poem, written while marching to rest camp after severe fighting at Loos, which sums up the lessons of battle with

unshaken belief in humanity. But finest of all are the lines " Before Action," written only two days before his death ;— " By all the gloriei Of the day And the cool evening's benison, By that last sunset touch that lay Upon the hills when day was done, By beauty lavishly outpoured And blessings carelessly received, By all the days that I have lived Make me a soldier, Lord.

By all of all man's hopes and fears, And all the wonders poets sing, The laughter of unclouded years And every sad and lovely thing ; By the romantic ages stored With high endeavour that was his, By all his mad catastrophes Make me a man, 0 Lord.

I, that on my familiar hill Saw with uncomprehending eyes A hundred of Thy sunsets spill Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice Ere the sun swings his noonday sword Must say good-bye to all of this ;—

By all delights that I shall miss, Help me to die, 0 Lord."

The volume also contains some vivid war sketches in prose. But it is in his verse that this heroic young soldier-poet has left an unforgettable memorial of uncomplaining self-sacrifice.

Mr. Harvey' most of whose poems were written at the front and appealed in the Fifth Gloucester Gazette, the first paper ever published

from the trenches, gained the Distinguished Conduct medal—ho was then lance-corporal—for conspicuous gallantry on patrol duty in August, 1915. But as Colonel Collett, who commands the battalion, remarks in his introduction, though these verses are written by a soldier, and reflects a soldier's outlook, " mud, blood and khaki are rather conspicuously absent. They are, in fact, the last things a soldier wishes to think or talk about. What he does think of is his home." These thoughts are often inarticulate, but Mr. Harvey's passion for home is not only genuine but vocal, and finds utterance in verse that is at once accomplished and poignant. No West Countryman can read without emotion his songs of Gloucestershire and Minsterworth, or " Piper's Wood;" or the charm-

ing " Ballade of River Sailing "—" Up-stream from Framilode to Bollopool "—or the cri de conic of the prologue in Flanders :-

" I'm homesick for my hills again— My hills again To see above the Severn plain, Unscabbarded against the sky, The blue high blade of Cotswold lie."

But this homesickness never blunts his resolution—witness the spirit that breathes in " The Soldier Speaks," " A People Renewed," and "If We Return," and the dedication to his comrades "who lie dead in foreign fields for love of England, or who live to prosecute the war for another. England."

Mr. Shane Leslie's slim volume, Verses in Peace and War,3 contains some mystical, symbolical, passionate poems—notably that on Ireland, "The Holy Land," and the strange imaginative "Judgment of Pilate."

But the strength of the collection is in the exquisite series of epitaphs on aviators, soldiers, sailors, and athletes. They all have a gem-like quality which recalls Lander, but perhaps the two we quote are the

finest " CAPTALV AIDAN LIDDELL, V.O.

Another one of mortal birth Huth set his spirit free. Lie very lightly on him, Earth, Who did not tread on thee.

" LIEUTENANT RUPERT BROOKE—Le/1MM Thou went to England's living Helicon A star of dawn as bright as swiftly shed— And now at sudden eve—with life undone—

Thy loveliness is light unto the dead."

Readers of the Greek Anthology will not fail to notice the exquisite skill with which a famous epigram has been hero rewritten.

The poems by the late Mr. E. Wyndham Tennaut4 were with few exceptions written in Flanders in the last few months of his short life, and one may say of them flaw! fiXX1 ?Ma, for they have a

flower-like grace that strangely contrasts with the surroundings in which they were penned. Only in one poem, " Light after Darkness," is there any reference to the grim business of war. The sight of a little garden behind the wreckage of Laventio sends his soul " dancing with a measured step from wrecked and shattered towns Away upon the Downs," and he goes on :- " I saw green banks of daffodil, Slim poplars in the breeze, Great tan-brown hares in gusty March A-courting on the leas ; And meadows with their glittering streams, and silver, scurrying dace.

Homo—what a perfect place 1" The song of "the freedom of the Downs," written at Poperinghe, has

the same charm, born of faithful observation and a happy choice of fit words ; "The Nightingale," from Boccaccio, shows a real gift for telling a story in verse ; and the dedicatory lines to his mother and uncle are deeply moving in their simple and reverent affection.

Though most of Mr. Francis Ledwidgo's poems were written on active service —in camp and barracks, at sea in the Mediterranean, in Serbia, Greece, and Egypt—they justify the title, chosen by Lord Dunsany, of Songs of Peace For they reveal at every turn the homing instinct, devotion to his native fields of Meath, love of beauty, melody, and the things of the imagination. " The Dream of Artemis," the longest poem in the volume, written before the war, has a wayward exuberance of imagery that recalls Keats's " Endymion " ; but Mr. Ledwidge is perhaps happiest in his lyrics, such as the beautiful lines to Ireland which begin " God made my mother on an April Day."

Mr. Robert W. Service's Rhymes of a Red-Cross Man° deal in more detail with the carnage of modern war than any of the other volumes noticed in this review. They are largely, in his own phrase, " songs from out the slaughter mill," and " through them all like horror runs The red resentment of the guns." Yet in the last poem of all ho strikes a more hopeful note :-

" Oh- spacious days of glory and of grieving I Oh sounding hours of lustre and of loss !

Let us be glad we lived you, still believing The God who gave the cannon gave the Cross."

Of Mr. Service's vigorous use of swinging ballad metres, of dialect, and of slang readers of his Songs of a Sourdough need not to be assured. His facility is remarkable ; indeed the quality of his verse suffers at times from its extreme fluency. But of its passion and sincerity there can be no doubt.

Most of the verses in Half-Hours at Helles7 have appeared in Punch. They are dedicated to the officers and men of the Hawke' Battalion, R.N.D., and they deal for the most part in a mood of high-spirited persiflage with the humours and the horrors of Gallipoli. Mr. Herbert is an accomplished versifier and a most ingenious rhymer, but we like him best when he is serious. " The Song of the Spade " is a really moving adaptation of Hood, and in the dedication there is a fine and adequate answer to any charge of levity that may be brought against these verses. He has not forgotten the agony and misery, the filth and stench of war,

" But if in England's host Men suffered undismayed, And tried to smile and smiled the mod When they were most afraid, And laughed before the grave, And jested in their pain, Herein, maybe, the living brave Shall hear them laugh again."

Soldier Songs from Anzacs is prefaced by a few hearty words from Major-General J. W. McCay, of the Australasian Imperial Force. This little book was written by Private Tom Skeyhill, a regimental signaller in the 8th Battalion, 2nd (Victorian) Infantry Brigade, who served in the Gallipoli Peninsula, landing on Anzac Beach on April 25th, and was blinded by a shell during the charge of his brigade on May 8th. But his ballads, written in the trenches or in hospital, excite admiration apart from the circumstances of their composition. As General McCay truly says, " they breathe love of country and of courage, the spirit of battle, soldiers' comradeship, sympathy for the fallen, and, withal, the unconquerable cheerfulness of the true fighting man." Mr. Skeyhill's picture of " The Sniper " is a generous tribute to the cunning and daring of the Turk ; he never complains of his own misfortunes, and the only trace of bitterness in his little book is to be found in the scathing verses on " Me Brother Wot Stayed at 'Ome."

Mr. Patrick MacGill's Soldier's Songs 5—prefaced with a very inter- esting letter to a friend on the favourite songs of the soldier on active service—make somewhat grim reading, but they are not as harsh as his prose, and now and again a note of unexpected and delicate tenderness is heard, as in the charming lines on soldiers' letters, " Death and the Fairies," and tho verses on Donegal, in which he says, after seven years' absence, "the hills of home are aye in my heart and never are far away." It is indeed a signal proof of versatility that the trench poems written in the crudest slang and the reverent and dignified lines on the Crucifix in Givenchy Church should have come from the same pen.

Mr. Alexander Robertson " was another of the scholar-soldiers who crowned a brilliant academic career by giving their lives to their country. He had taken a First Class in History at Edinburgh and the B.Litt. degree at Oxford, and was appointed History Lecturer at Sheffield University just before the war. How deeply he felt the spell of Oxford is shown in the poems, "On Passing Oxford in a Troop Train" and "A Dream of New College," in the former of which occurs the noble tribute to " That dear mother of the soul Who found us sick and made us whole, Restrained not but enjoined the quest Of Truth until the final rest, And hinted that the search might be The object of Eternity ; That in defiance and in hcpe Alone may lie the means to cope With what life brings of ill ; that naught Is failure but despairing thought."

Another admirable poem is that headed " Thou Shalt Love Thine Enemies," describing in a spirit of reverent chivalry the emotions aroused by seeing the letters and Prayer Book found on a dead German soldier.

Mr. Scott's poems, In the Battle Silences," were written at the Western front, where he is serving with the 1st Canadian Division. In them we find devotion to the Motherland—" the Blood which Thou didst give us is the blood we spill for thee "—combined with a passionate love of Canada, with her " lakes and streams and boundless dreams and rivers running free," and a deep conviction that "Life is born of Life's self-sacrifice." Two of the poems, " On the Rue du Bohr" and " Requiescant," will be familiar to readers of the Times. Of the rest, the beautiful elegy, " A Grave in Flanders," and the salute to France, ennobled by sorrow, are the most striking.

Pride in England, her cause and her sons, " valiant as those that bore you, And sent you forth with a still countenance, And broke their hearts for England and live on "—are the keynotes of " X.'s" War Poems," which are dedicated to the Artists' Rifles, and contain many ringing lines, and inter alia a genial tribute to Marshal Joffre and an ingenious and spirited adaptation of Mr. Kipling's " If."

The fine imaginative poem, " The Old Way," which stands first in Captain Ronald Hopwood's volume," appeared in the Times last Sept- ember, and, like all the pieces in the book, it emphasizes the continuity of England's naval spirit. As for " The Laws of the Navy," published in the Naval and Military Record in October, 1893, they form an epitome of the unwritten rules of the Silent Service which has already become almost classical. The new solidarity of the Royal Navy and the Mer- chant Service is admirably illustrated in " The Auxiliary "—addressed to the trawlers, lineal descendants of Drake and Hawkins—and Captain Hopwood proves himself a good naval historian as well as a poet in " The Figureheads " and " The Boatswain's Tale." based on incidents of sea warfare in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.

Miss Fox-Smith's command of " deep-sea speech " and her happy use of the lilt and rhythm of the " chanty " are once more shown in Fighting Men." "The Rhyme of the 'Inisfail,' " "The Ballad of the Resur- rection Packet," " The Silent Navy," " Torpedo-Boats," and " Light Cruisers " tell in different ways, but always with the same high spirit and humour, of our debt to the Royal Navy and the Merchant Service. But the Army is not forgotten, and " The Route March," " Stow," "Mules," and "Farewell to Anzac " reveal the same insight into the heart of the British fighting man ; his habit of " grousing," which never impairs his courage in hours of trial ; his good comradeship, and his longing for home. Nor is Miss Fox-Smith less happy when she exchanges the homely argot of the sailorman or "Tommy " for the vein of high elegy, as in the closing stanza of " Spring in Hampshire."

Though they do not come from the battle-front, several of Mi s Letts's poems " show direct contact with war in hospital, and pay an affecting tribute to courageous sufferers and devoted nurses. She grieves over the shattered flotsam of battle, and the loss of our golden boys, who " gave their merry youth away for country and for God," yet she does not quarrel with their heroic self-sacrifice :-

" God rest you, happy gentlemen, Who laid your good lives down, Who took the khaki and the gun, Instead of cap and gown.

God bring you to a fairer place Than even Oxford town."

A fine sonnet sequence tells of the sorrows of those " hearts that break and live, having no more to give—mothers, sweethearts, wives." In the Miscellaneous section which closes the volume we may note the beautiful " Rosa Mystics " and " The Winds at Bethlehem " and two studies of submerged poverty in Dublin—the half-starved child who would not leave her mother because " the creature loves her home," and the moving ballad of the old beggar-woman mercifully cured by Death the doctor. Miss Letts never strikes a wrong note or plucks needlessly at our heartstrings, and if there is little gaiety in her new volume, there is no wantoning with sorrow.