VERSES

Evening Star, Issue 23729, 9 November 1940, Page 4

VERSES

ENGLAND AGAIN IS OURS England again is ours, to whom again Wo penitent with prodigal dreams return From husks of darkening Alp and deathly plain, Humble to find her faithful beauty burn.

So memory-full, so passionate, so still, That wo, who were in thrall to the immense, End that apostasy, submit, our will, Worship her smallness, love her difference.

Yet is she all of Europe: in this bound Of jewelled freedom set with sounding waves Aro infinite hopes of anguished races found, And all free souls of those accounted slaves.

—G. Rostrevor Hamilton, in the ‘ Observer.’

THE SOLITARY MAN

Humbled by the large events Of war, and all its needs, I put away private intents And personal greeds. I button on the discipline, My nation-coloured coat, And take my station in the line Lost and remote.

Yes, 1 am lost, but well content; Obscure, a cancelled soul, To answer with the regiment At the calling of the roll. The roll-call! I can hear it now lling round our threatened coast, The challenge to the bully’s blow, The signal to the lost.

The lost of Europe! For their sakes I and my British kind Freedom resign till freedom wakes In each despairing mind. For their sakes, and the others, too, The unborn of our race, Whose right we in this act renew; Our grace for their grace.

—Richard Church, in the ‘ Observer.’