“VALOUR AND VISION."

Otago Witness, Issue 3510, 21 June 1921, Page 62

“VALOUR AND VISION."

By

Jessie Mackay.

Yet another war-book, retelling in verse during 1920, the story of hope and fear and love and loss that lay between 1914 and 1918. The editor of this anthology, Miss Jacqueline Trotter, has done her work on plans and with a fine selectiveness that conveys the keynote of each succeeding year, with its tale of engagements lost or won. The book is eclectic, ranging from the assured words of the masters to flying lines snatched out of magazines, but all conveying the dominant note of the hour. It is compiled with a purpose, that is, to help the incorporated soldiers and sailors help society. The sequence follows on from the first saining call to the colours for hearth and home, pity and chivalry, to the last chastened cadence to peace and rest-. Lawrence Binyon sounds the first: — Now in thy splendour go before us, Spirit of England arclent-eyed, Enkindle this dear earth that bore us, In the hour of peril purified. P. H. Syon .breathes the last: — Now to be still and rest, while the heart remembers All that it learned and loved in the days long past, To- sto-op and warm our hands at the fallen embers, Glad to have come to the long way’s end at last. Henry Xewbolt gives us a quaint touch of his own quality in “The Toy Band: A Song of the Great Retreat”: Cheerly goes the dark read, cheeily gees the night, Choeriy goes the blood to keep the beat; Half a thousand dead men marching on to fight, With a little penny drum to lilt their feet. As long as there’s an Englishman to ask a tale of me, As. long as I can tell the tale aright, We’ii not forget the penny whistle’s wlieedle-dee-die-dco, And the big Drago-on a-beating down the night, Rub-a-dub, rub-a-dub! Wake and take the road again, Wheedlerdeedle-deedle-dee, come boys, come! You that mean to fight it out. wake and take your load again. Fall in! Fall in! Follow the fife and! drum! In that oneness of uplift that thrilled across the world in 1914, even the. Irish-, born Katherine Tynan sees England though the same rose of glamour as colonial .eyes : To men now- of her blood and race, England’s a little garden place-, Dear as a woman is, and she The queen of every l-oyalty, To dwellers- ’mid the ic-e and snows, She is their secret garden rose From which that bee, their heart, sucks off For tlie cold winter honey enough. Most loved of those who never knew Her green o' the silk, and her soft blue, Her mild inviolate fields that b? Hedged with the sweet briar of the sea. Touch her! and they are all on lire, This little land of iheir desire, Seen in a mirage far away "With light upon hi r night and clay. •Tames Elroy Fletcher sounds the same throbbing note of British unity: Evening on the olden, the golden sea of Wales. Where Ihe first star slavers and tlie last O even’s:'..: dreams! There's a house that Britons walked in, long ago, Where now the springs of oceans fall and And the dead robed in rod, and sca-liles overgrow, •'•'way where the- long winds blow. West of these out to seas colder than the Hebrides I must go, ’Where the fleet of stars is anchored, and the young Star-captains glow. “Valour and Vision..” Poems of the War. Edited by Jacqueline T. Trotter: Longmans, Green and Co., London. 5s 6d.

Neil Munvo sings Iris Scottish song of the Roving Lads: Moon in the glen, youth in the blood. Sent us stravaigin’ far; Oure lato! ouve late in the whisperin' wood. So we saw nae morning star. Deep, deep we drank in tavern lands, For the'sake o' conrpanie. And some of us wrecked on Young Mail Sands Ere ever we got to sea. We liad nae heed for the parish bell, But still—when the bugle cried, We went. f or ye nto Neuve Chapelle, \Ye went for you to the depths o' hell, And there for you we died! Here, again, an English boy from the schools, Kverard Queen, sings of tlie “Three Hills,” the little hill of Harrow “with the playing fields below,” the low Hill Sixty with its “soul that died in pain,” and last: There is a hill in Jewry. Three crosses pierce the sky, On the midmost He is dying To save all those who die. A little hill, a kind hill To souls in jeopardy. Soldier men in their bitter watches make j much of the birds who choose to share these exile hours. T. P. Cameron Wilson has a song-of the Magpies of Picardy: A ina rpie in Picardy Told me secret tilings. He told me that in I’icar-dy An age ago or mare, When all his fa'hers still were eggs. These dusty highways bore Blown singing soldiers marching out Through Picardy to war. He said that still through chaos Works on the ancient plan. And two things have altered not Since first the world began— Tlie beauty of the wild green earth, And the biaverv of men. The long tension of 1917 holds in the sad patience of the verses written, and quivers in this little ballad of Wilfred Wilson Gibson : As I was walking with my dear, my dear came back at last, The shadow of the Ragged Stone foil on us as we passed. And if the tale be true they tell about tno Ragged Stone, I’ll not be walking with my dear next year, nor yet alone. And we’re to wed come Michaelmas, my lovely dear and I, And we’re to have a little house, and do not want to die. But all tlie folk are fighting in the lands across the son, Because the king and counsellors went mad in Germany. Because the king and counsellors went mad, my love and X May never have .. little house before we come to die. And if the tale be true they toll about the - Ragged Stone, I’ll not be walking with my dear next year, nor yet a lone. The bitter, naked disillusion of 1918, labouring on to an end that seemed to mock all hope almost to the last, speaks out of an airman’s soul in the “Ncx Mortis,” of Paul Bewsher : So now must I, Bird of the night, Towards the sky Make wheeling flight, And bear my pois-on o’er tlie gloomy land, And let it loose with hard unsparing hand. Death, Grief, and Pain Are what I give. O that the slain Might live—might live! I know them not. for 1 lia-ve blindly killed. Amt nuns, less herns with nr.melt- s sorrow filled. Thrice cursed war Which bids that I Such death should pour Down from the sky. O Star of Peace rise swiftly in the East That from such slaying men may be released. But .J. H. MncXair has a tameless English song of guarding sea-dogs running on to victory : —- Sea-weary, Argonauts, beaching their barque, Greeted their brothers with salty threats; Noah leant cut of his painted ark. Crying: “Ho! my sons!” to the o.lek.n coats; Peter tiie Fisherman tailing notes . Added, smiling against bis will, “One old cruiser, two ferry boats Vindictive, Iris, and Daffodil!” Quoth the fair-haired Vikings, reckless and stark. “We stirred the mud of our i~ on. - no Ms. We. ton, went piratong into the dark When we were sowing our wild-s a oats. "Xav, pirates are numbered among the goats,” Cried the Pilgrim Fathers from over the li ill, — "On these the flag of the Mayflower floats — Vindictive, Iris, and Daffodil!” Nelson listened, and Drake said, “Hark!” And the English captains, as many as motes, Chuckled like schoolboys over a lark—- “ Now these are the lads that take our votes From Land’s End northward to John o’ G roats, All round the coast ran a sudden thrill, “O English rabbits will turn on ,-t- ats, Vindictive, Iris, and Daffodil!” So at last this English mitolv-li.gv rounds to the end in the words of P. IT. Lyon :—- Now to awake, end feel no ice ret at waking, Kyi o.ig the shadowy days arc white again, To draw cur curtains and watch the slow dawn breakers Silver and grey on Enyl.sh field and lane. That is not the climax verse here. But in 1921, who dares to speak of “building a city of peace on the wastes of war?” Red is the city we are building today, and the “great white road” of the poet’s dream darkens down— whither?