The Two Flocks

Where are you going to now, white sheep, Walking the green hill-side; To join that whiter flock on top, And share their pride?

Stay where you are, you silly sheep: When you arrive up there, You'll find that whiter flock on top Clouds in the air!

Yet much of his poetry springs from his wide knowledge and experience of life. An original defence of the solitary existence is seen in Death's Game, although possibly the grapes are sour.

Death can but play one game with me-- If I do live alone; He cannot strike me a foul blow Through a belovèd one.

Today he takes my neighbour's wife, And leaves a little child To lie upon his breast and cry Like the Night-wind, so wild.

And every hour its voice is heard-- Tell me where is she gone! Death cannot play that game with me-- If I do live alone.

The feather-weight pocket-volumes of verse that this poet puts forth, each containing a crop of tiny poems--have an excellent virtue--they are interesting, good companions for a day in the country. There is always sufficient momentum in page 28 to carry you on to page 29--something that cannot be said of all books.

English literature suffered a loss in the death of Edward Thomas, who was killed in France on the ninth of April, 1917. He was born on the third of March, 1878, and had published a long list of literary critiques, biographies, interpretations of nature, and introspective essays. He took many solitary journeys afoot; his books The South Country, The Heart of England, and others, show both observation and reflection. Although English by birth and education, he had in his veins Welsh and Spanish blood.

In 1917 a tiny volume of his poems appeared. These are unlike any other verse of the past or present. They cannot be called great poetry, but they are original, imaginative, whimsical, and reveal a rich personality. Indeed we feel in reading these rimes that the author was greater than anything he wrote or could write. The difficulty in articulation comes apparently from a mind so full that it cannot run freely off the end of a pen.

Shyness was undoubtedly characteristic of the man, as it often is of minute observers of nature. I am not at all surprised to learn from one who knew him of his "temperamental melancholy." He was austere and aloof; but exactly the type of mind that would give all he had to those who possessed his confidence. It must have been a privilege to know him intimately. I have said that his poems resemble the work of no other poet; this is true; but there is a certain kinship between him and Robert Frost, indicated not only in the verses, but in the fact that his book is dedicated to the American.

His death accentuates the range of the dragnet of war. This intellectual, quiet, introspective, slightly ironical temperament would seem almost ideally unfitted for the trenches. Yet, although no soldier by instinct, and having a family dependent upon his writings for support, he gave himself freely to the Great Cause. He never speaks in his verses of his own sacrifice, and indeed says little about the war; but the first poem in the volume expresses the universal call.

Rise up, rise up, And, as the trumpet blowing Chases the dreams of men, As the dawn glowing The stars that left unlit The land and water, Rise up and scatter The dew that covers The print of last night's lovers-- Scatter it, scatter it!

While you are listening To the clear horn, Forget, men, everything On this earth newborn, Except that it is lovelier Than any mysteries. Open your eyes to the air That has washed the eyes of the stars Through all the dewy night: Up with the light, To the old wars; Arise, arise!

In reading Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, Alan Seeger, we recognize how much greater were the things they sacrificed than the creature comforts ordinarily emphasized in the departure from home to the trenches; these men gave up their imagination.

A thoroughly representative poem by Edward Thomas is Cock-Crow; beauty of conception mingled with the inevitable touch of homeliness at the end.

Out of the wood of thoughts that grows by night To be cut down by the sharp axe of light,-- Out of the night, two cocks together crow, Cleaving the darkness with a silver blow: And bright before my eyes twin trumpeters stand, Heralds of splendour, one at either hand, Each facing each as in a coat of arms; The milkers lace their boots up at the farms.

This is his favourite combination, seen on every page of his work,--fancy and fact.

Another poet in khaki who writes powerful and original verse is Robert Nichols (born 1893), an Oxford man who has already produced two volumes--Invocation, and, in 1918, Ardours and Endurances. Accompanying the second is a portrait made in 1915, exhibiting the face of a dreamy-looking boy. No one who reads the pages of this book can doubt the author's gift. In his trench-poetry he somehow manages to combine the realism of Barbusse with an almost holy touch of imagination; and some of the most beautiful pieces are manly laments for friends killed in battle. He was himself severely wounded. His poems of strenuous action are mostly too long to quote; occasionally he writes in a more quiet mood of contemplation.