Chapter I: Foreword

THESE poems, by a writer for whom I have literary hopes, belong very clearly to that new and vigorous type of poetry which has sprung from the stress of the last few years and has its root in things done and suffered rather than in things merely imagined.

Until lately our very belief in the saying that the poet is born and not made proved that we had completely accepted poetry as coming only from within, spun, as it were, out of our inner consciousness, and either quite unhelped, or else only partially helped, by active experiences from without. We have always understood, of course, that such an experience as, for instance, the sudden flashing upon us of a magnetic face as a stranger passes in the street might set aglow a train of thought that would quicken and melt into feeling, and the feeling would, in turn, need--and find--expression in poetry.

So far as this we have admitted that outward occurrences in the course of our quickly flying days can become a source of poetical inspiration. But, in spite of the pointing finger of Kipling, most of us clung desperately to the verse that had its sole origin in imaginative emotion until the blaze of war in the world illumined our souls and showed all of us that out of our simplest practical work can be struck sparks of real and great and rare divine fire.

All the poems in this little book are the outcome of things very deeply felt. It is very difficult for me to write of them because where there is pain uttered in them, it has almost always been my pain as well as the author’s. One or two of the sonnets condense the expression of losses that have meant a life’s upheaval. One or two, again, are practically a concrete record of simple human things observed and suffered and of duty strenuously done. Here there is no leisured dreaming, but sheer experience, solid and stored up, like the honey that a bee’s labour has stored.

But this practical quality, while it has so much that makes it rich and valuable, has also the one conspicuous disadvantage that the work is often done under conditions of strain and turmoil that tell against perfection of method. Some of these _Verses of a V.A.D._ were written in almost breathless intervals of severe and devoted duty. The poem entitled “The German Ward” is especially an example of this. In such circumstances, it is difficult to achieve any literary ornamentation and least of all that particular kind of simpleness which is the highest form of finished art. In the case of several of the poems, both these qualities have been achieved; yet, because of the difficulties, I make an appeal for considerateness and tender sympathy in judging these first shy flowers of the heart and mind of a young girl who has worked unceasingly and self-forgettingly for the good of others since the days of stress began, and who in her personal destiny has suffered as, I hope, very few have suffered.

MARIE CONNOR LEIGHTON.

CONTENTS

PAGE

AUGUST 1914 15

ST. PANCRAS STATION, AUGUST 1915 16

TO A FALLEN IDOL 17

TO MONSEIGNEUR 18

THE ONLY SON 19

PERHAPS---- 20

A MILITARY HOSPITAL 21

LOOKING WESTWARD 22

THEN AND NOW 24

MAY MORNING 25

THE TWO TRAVELLERS 27

ROUNDEL 28

THE SISTERS BURIED AT LEMNOS 29

IN MEMORIAM: G.R.Y.T. 31

A PARTING WORD 32

TO MY BROTHER 33

SIC TRANSIT---- 34

TO THEM 35

OXFORD REVISITED 36

THAT WHICH REMAINETH 37

THE GERMAN WARD 38

THE TROOP-TRAIN 40

TO MY WARD-SISTER 41

TO ANOTHER SISTER 42

“VENGEANCE IS MINE” 43

WAR 44

THE LAST POST 45

THE ASPIRANT 46

Acknowledgments are due to the Editor of _The Oxford Magazine_, in which “May Morning” and “The Sisters buried at Lemnos” were first published.

AUGUST 1914

GOD said, “Men have forgotten Me;
The souls that sleep shall wake again,
And blinded eyes must learn to see.”

So since redemption comes through pain
He smote the earth with chastening rod,
And brought Destruction’s lurid reign;

But where His desolation trod
The people in their agony
Despairing cried, “There is no God.”

SOMERVILLE COLLEGE,
OXFORD.

ST. PANCRAS STATION, AUGUST 1915

ONE long, sweet kiss pressed close upon my lips,
One moment’s rest on your swift-beating heart,
And all was over, for the hour had come
For us to part.

A sudden forward motion of the train,
The world grown dark although the sun still shone,
One last blurred look through aching tear-dimmed eyes--
And you were gone.

TO A FALLEN IDOL

O YOU who sought to rend the stars from Heaven
But rent instead your too-ambitious heart,
Know that with those to whom Love’s joy is given
You have not, nor can ever have, a part.

A nation’s loyalty might have been your glory,
And men have blessed your name from shore to shore,
But you have set the seal upon your story,
And must go hence, alone for evermore.

TO MONSEIGNEUR

(R.A.L., LIEUTENANT, WORCESTERS)

NONE shall dispute Your kingship, nor declare
Another could have held the place You hold,
For though he brought me finer gifts than gold,
And laid before my feet his heart made bare
Of all but love for me, and sighed despair
If I but feigned my favours to withhold,
And would repudiate as sadly cold
The proud and lofty manner that You wear,

He would not be my pure and stainless knight
Of heart without reproach or hint of fear,
Who walks unscathed amid War’s sordid ways
By base desire or bloodshed’s grim delight,
But ever holds his hero’s honour dear--
Roland of Roncesvalles in modern days.

1ST LONDON GENERAL HOSPITAL,
_November 1915._

THE ONLY SON

THE storm beats loud, and you are far away,
The night is wild,
On distant fields of battle breaks the day,
My little child?

I sought to shield you from the least of ills
In bygone years,
I soothed with dreams of manhood’s far-off hills
Your baby fears,

But could not save you from the shock of strife;
With radiant eyes
You seized the sword and in the path of Life
You sought your prize.

The tempests rage, but you are fast asleep;
Though winds be wild
They cannot break your endless slumbers deep,
My little child.

PERHAPS----

(TO R.A.L. DIED OF WOUNDS IN FRANCE, DECEMBER 23RD, 1915)

PERHAPS some day the sun will shine again,
And I shall see that still the skies are blue,
And feel once more I do not live in vain,
Although bereft of You.

Perhaps the golden meadows at my feet
Will make the sunny hours of Spring seem gay,
And I shall find the white May blossoms sweet,
Though You have passed away.

Perhaps the summer woods will shimmer bright,
And crimson roses once again be fair,
And autumn harvest fields a rich delight,
Although You are not there.

Perhaps some day I shall not shrink in pain
To see the passing of the dying year,
And listen to the Christmas songs again,
Although You cannot hear.

But, though kind Time may many joys renew,
There is one greatest joy I shall not know
Again, because my heart for loss of You
Was broken, long ago.

1ST LONDON GENERAL HOSPITAL,
_February 1916._

A MILITARY HOSPITAL

A MASS of human wreckage, drifting in
Borne on a blood-red tide,
Some never more to brave the stormy sea
Laid reverently aside,
And some with love restored to sail again
For regions far and wide.

1ST LONDON GENERAL HOSPITAL, _1916_.

LOOKING WESTWARD

“For a while the quiet body
Lies with feet toward the Morn.”
HYMN 499, A. & M.

WHEN I am dead, lay me not looking East,
But towards the verge where daylight sinks to rest,
For my Beloved, who fell in War’s dark year,
Lies in a foreign meadow, facing West.

He does not see the Heavens flushed with dawn,
But flaming through the sunset’s dying gleam;
He is not dazzled by the Morning Star,
But Hesper soothes him with her gentle beam.

He faces not the guns he thrilled to hear,
Nor sees the skyline red with fires of Hell;
He looks for ever towards that dear home land
He loved, but bade a resolute farewell.

So would I, when my hour has come for sleep,
Lie watching where the twilight shades grow grey;
Far sooner would I share with him the Night
Than pass without him to the Splendid Day.

THEN AND NOW

“πάντα ῤει καἰ ούδένα μένει”

ONCE the black pine-trees on the mountain side,
The river dancing down the valley blue,
And strange brown grasses swaying with the tide,
All spoke to me of you.

But now the sullen streamlet creeping slow,
The moaning tree-tops dark above my head,
The weeds where once the grasses used to grow
Tell me that you are dead.

MAY MORNING

(_Note._--At Oxford on May 1st a Latin hymn is sung at sunrise by the Magdalen choristers from the top of the tower.)

THE rising sun shone warmly on the tower,
Into the clear pure Heaven the hymn aspired
Piercingly sweet. This was the morning hour
When life awoke with Spring’s creative power,
And the old City’s grey to gold was fired.

Silently reverent stood the noisy throng;
Under the bridge the boats in long array
Lay motionless. The choristers’ far song
Faded upon the breeze in echoes long.
Swiftly I left the bridge and rode away.

Straight to a little wood’s green heart I sped,
Where cowslips grew, beneath whose gold withdrawn
The fragrant earth peeped warm and richly red;
All trace of Winter’s chilling touch had fled,
And song-birds ushered in the year’s bright morn.

I had met Love not many days before,
And as in blissful mood I listening lay
None ever had of joy so full a store.
I thought that Spring must last for evermore,
For I was young and loved, and it was May.

* * * * *

Now it is May again, and sweetly clear
Perhaps once more aspires the Latin hymn
From Magdalen tower, but not for me to hear.
I toil far distant, for a darker year
Shadows the century with menace grim.

I walk in ways where pain and sorrow dwell,
And ruin such as only War can bring,
Where each lives through his individual hell,
Fraught with remembered horror none can tell,
And no more is there glory in the Spring.

And I am worn with tears, for he I loved
Lies cold beneath the stricken sod of France;
Hope has forsaken me, by Death removed,
And Love that seemed so strong and gay has proved
A poor crushed thing, the toy of cruel Chance.

Often I wonder, as I grieve in vain,
If when the long, long future years creep slow,
And War and tears alike have ceased to reign,
I ever shall recapture, once again,
The mood of that May morning, long ago.

1ST LONDON GENERAL HOSPITAL,
_May 1916._

THE TWO TRAVELLERS

Beware!
You met two travellers in the town
Who promised you that they would take you down
The valley far away
To some strange carnival this Summer’s day.
Take care,
Lest in the crowded street
They hurry past you with forgetting feet,
And leave you standing there.

ROUNDEL

(“DIED OF WOUNDS”)

BECAUSE you died, I shall not rest again,
But wander ever through the lone world wide,
Seeking the shadow of a dream grown vain
Because you died.

I shall spend brief and idle hours beside
The many lesser loves that still remain,
But find in none my triumph and my pride;

And Disillusion’s slow corroding stain
Will creep upon each quest but newly tried,
For every striving now shall nothing gain
Because you died.

FRANCE,
_February 1918._

THE SISTERS BURIED AT LEMNOS

(“FIDELIS AD EXTREMUM”)

O GOLDEN Isle set in the deep blue Ocean,
With purple shadows flitting o’er thy crest,
I kneel to thee in reverent devotion
Of some who on thy bosom lie at rest!

Seldom they enter into song or story;
Poets praise the soldier’s might and deeds of War,
But few exalt the Sisters, and the glory
Of women dead beneath a distant star.

No armies threatened in that lonely station,
They fought not fire or steel or ruthless foe,
But heat and hunger, sickness and privation,
And Winter’s deathly chill and blinding snow.

Till mortal frailty could endure no longer
Disease’s ravages and climate’s power,
In body weak, but spirit ever stronger,
Courageously they stayed to meet their hour.

No blazing tribute through the wide world flying,
No rich reward of sacrifice they craved,
The only meed of their victorious dying
Lives in the hearts of humble men they saved.

Who when in light the Final Dawn is breaking,
Still faithful, though the world’s regard may cease,
Will honour, splendid in triumphant waking,
The souls of women, lonely here at peace.

O golden Isle with purple shadows falling
Across thy rocky shore and sapphire sea,
I shall not picture these without recalling
The Sisters sleeping on the heart of thee!

H.M.H.S. “BRITANNIC,” MUDROS,
_October 1916._

IN MEMORIAM: G.R.Y.T.

(KILLED IN ACTION, APRIL 23RD, 1917)