AUGUST, 1914.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15766, 14 November 1914, Page 4 (Supplement)

AUGUST, 1914.

How still this quiet cornfield is to-night; By an intenser glow the evening falls, Bringing, not darkness, but a deeper light ; Among the stooks a partridge covey calls.

These homes, this valley spread below me here, The rooks, the tilted stacks, the beasts

in pen, Have been the heartfelt things, pastspeaking dear To unknown generations of dead men. Who, century after century, held these farms, And. looking out to -watch the changing sky, Heard, as wa hear, the rumours and alarms Of war at band and danger pressing nigh,

And knew, as we know; that the message meant The breaking-off of ties, the loss of friends, Death like a miser getting in his rent And no new stones laid where the trackway ends.

The harvest not yet won, the empty bin, The friendly horses taken from the stalls, The fallow on the hill not yet brought in, The cracks unplastered'in the leaking walls;

Yet heard the news, and went discouraged home, And brooded by the fixe with heavy mind, With such dumb loving of the Berkshire loam, As breaks the dumb hearts of the English kind.

Then sadly ■ rose and left the well-loved Downs And so, by ship to sea, and knew no more, The fields of home, the byres, the market towns, Nor the dear outline of the English shore,

But knew the misery of the soaking trench, The freezing in the rigging, the despair In the revolting second of the wrench When the blind soul is flung upon the air.

And died (unconthly, most) in foreign lands For some idea but dimly understood Of an English city never built by hands, Which love of England prompted and made good.

If there be any life beyond the grave It must be near the men and things we love. Some power of quick suggestion how to save. Touching the living soul as from above, An influence from the Earth from those dead hearts So passionate once, so deep, so truly kind. J That in the living child the spirit starts Feeling companioned still, not left behind.

Surely above these fields a spirit broods, A sense of many watchers muttering near, ° Of the lone Downland with the forlorn woods Loved to the death, inestimably dear. —John Masetield, ; .n the English Review.