d, could, can, may--we must!

So many divers voices call,
And cloud our souls with dull dismay:
O when shall cry, clear over all,
The Voice that none can disobey?
My country, speak!
In no oblique
Uncertain tone; be this our cry:
If Honour is not ours, we die.

My country, speak! They lie who say
That we are soft with love of home;
For still, in all the ancient way,
Our ships shall kiss the perilled foam.
Yea, slow to wrath,
But lo, our path
Leads straight at last, and blithe to tread:
We shall live better, having bled.
_March_ 1917.

AMERICA, 1917

Dynamo of strength uncurbed,
Boundless might, undisciplined;
Energies still undisturbed,
Power, unharnessed as the wind--

Huge, inchoate commonweal,
Lo, at last we catch the thrill:
Now we found and forge the steel,
Scoop a channel for the will.

Here we stand; and destiny
Now admits us no retreat:
Hearts are braced from sea to sea,
_Hark! I hear the marching feet!_

Hills are moved; streams faster run;
Plumper kernels fill the wheat,
Now we dream and do as one....
_Hark! I hear the marching feet!_
_March_ 1917.

ON VIMY RIDGE

"The Stars and Stripes went into battle at Vimy Ridge on the bayonet
of a young Texan, fighting with a Canadian regiment."--News item.

On Vimy Ridge the Flag renewed
Her youth: the thunder of the guns
Recalled the crimson plenitude
Shed by her ancient sons.

Once more her white and scarlet bands
Were new-baptized with battle sweat:
She felt the clutch of desperate hands,
The push of bayonet.

Across that bloody snarl of wire
Her colors blossomed clean as flame:
The Bride of Glory, in desire
To meet her groom she came.

The lightning in her folds she kept,
The sky, the stars, the dew--
Impassioned, in her youth she swept
On Vimy, born anew!

HAY FEVER, AND OTHER LITERARY POLLEN

HAY FEVER

If Rudyard Kipling Had It

If you can face a ragweed without sneezing
And walk undaunted past a stack of hay;
If you can find a field of daisies pleasing,
And not require ten handkerchiefs a day;
If you can stroll in meadowland and orchard
And greet the goldenrod with gay surprise,
And not be most abomina