We who are left, and our womenfolk, too,
Rulers of Europe, will settle with you--
You, and your trade.
_October_, 1914.

TILL TWISTON WENT

Till Twiston went, the war still seemed
A far-off thing: a nightmare dreamed,
Some bruit or fable half-believed,
Too hideous to be conceived.

His letter came: the memories throng
Of days that made the friendship strong--
The oar he won, the ties he wore,
His love of china, fairy lore,
(And flappers); and his honest eyes;
His stammer, his absurdities;
His marmalade, his bitter beer,
And all that made him quaint and dear.

And though we muckle have to do
Yet love must needs come breaking through,
And now and then the office hum
Dies like a mist, ... and there will come
An Oxford breakfast scene: the quad
All blue and grey outside--O God--
And there sits Twiston at the feast
Proclaiming he will be a priest!
I see his eyes, his homely neb--
Ring, telephones, and cut the web!

And when it's over, will there be
In his grey house above the Dee
A mug to drain? Will we renew
The dreams of all we hoped to do?
Our Cotswold tramps? And will there still
Be flappers in the surf at Rhyl?
O how I counted on the hour
When he would see the Woolworth Tower,
And how we set our hearts upon
The steep grey walls of Carcassonne!

TO RUDYARD KIPLING

For His Fiftieth Birthday (December 30, 1915)

Lord of our noble English tongue,
Who holdest seizin of our speech,
Whose epic Mowgli first did reach
The valves of all our hearts when young--

Master of every grace and ire,
Wide as the salt-winged fulmar gulls
That circle England's battle hulls,
Your songs have fanned the Imperial fire.

By Oak and Ash and Thorns, by all
Old memories of Sussex sod,
To you we pile the altar clod
And ask a new Recessional.

TO A U-BOAT

With Apologies to William Blake

Tiger, tiger of the seas,
King of scarlet butcheries,
What infernal hand and eye
Planned your dread machinery?

Men of Hamburg, Bremen, Kiel,
Watch the gauge and turn the wheel,
Proud, perhaps, to have defiled
Oceans, to destroy a child.

With your thunderbolt you strike
Cargo, women, all alike--
Stain with red God's clean green sea,
Call