His boundary river's secret falls
Perpetuate and repeat his name.
He rides his loud October sky:
He does not die. He does not die.

The beeches know the accustomed head
Which loved them, and a peopled air
Beneath their benediction spread
Comforts the silence everywhere;
For native ghosts return and these
Perfect the mystery in the trees.

So, therefore, though myself be crosst
The shuddering of that dreadful day
When friend and fire and home are lost
And even children drawn away--
The passer-by shall hear me still,
A boy that sings on Duncton Hill."

It is of a robuster sort than the other poems and in a way their climax
for it expresses the same emotion. It is indeed the final movement of
the book which treats in particular of the love of Sussex, but also of
the general emotion of the love of one's own country. There is
melancholy mixed with this feeling, as with all strong affections: with
it are associated the love of friends and the dread of parting from them
and regret for the accomplishment of such a thing.

In these few poems, his best, Mr. Belloc seems to have expressed this
mood completely and so to have shown--we have said as it were by
accident--an abiding and fundamental mood. We have been constrained to
criticize his poetry much as he has criticized the poetry of others,
that is to say, sporadically and without continuity. But we have touched
here perhaps on a thing, the obscure existence of which also we
indicated, the secret root that shows his poetry to be a true and native
growth of the soil from which his other writings have sprung.

CHAPTER V

THE STUDENT OF MILITARY AFFAIRS

Mr Belloc's most important writings on the war are to be found in _Land
and Water_, the _Illustrated Sunday Herald_, and _Pearson's Magazine_.
To these must be added his series of books of which only one has so far
appeared--_A General Sketch of the European War_. His series of articles
in _Pearson's Magazine_ has also been reprinted in book-form under the
title _The Two Maps_.

Of these his writings in _Land and Water_ are, at the present time, the
most important. Since the earliest stages of the war Mr. Belloc has
contributed to _Land and Water_ a weekly article. What is the nature of
this article? In the first place, it is a commentary on the current
events of the campaign. Mr. Belloc himself, when challenged recently to