ad near Ypres and died of his wounds at Boulogne on May
26th, 1915. During these months in France, by the testimony of all who
saw him and of all to whom he wrote, his character received its final
touch of ripeness. Among his other attainments he abruptly discovered
the gift of noble gnomic verse. On receiving news of the death of Rupert
Brooke, and a month before his own death, Julian Grenfell wrote the
verses called "Into Battle," which contain the unforgettable stanzas:--

"The fighting man shall from the sun
Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth;
Speed with the light-foot winds to run,
And with the trees to newer birth....

"The woodland trees that stand together,
They stand to him each one a friend;
They gently speak in the windy weather;
They guide to valley and ridge's end.

"The kestrel hovering by day,
And the little owls that call by night,
Bid him be swift and keen as they,
As keen of ear, as swift of sight.

"The blackbird sings to him 'Brother, brother,
If this be the last song you shall sing,
Sing well, for you may not sing another,
Brother, sing.'"

The whole of this poem is memorable, down to its final prophetic
quatrain:--

"The thundering line of battle stands,
And in the air Death moans and sings;
But Day shall clasp him with strong hands,
And Night shall fold him in soft wings."

"Could any other man in the British Army have knocked out a heavy-weight
champion one week and written that poem the next?" a brother officer
asked. "Into Battle" remains, and will probably continue to remain, the
clearest lyrical expression of the fighting spirit of England in which
the war has found words. It is a poem for soldiers, and it gives noble
form to their most splendid aspirations. Julian Grenfell wrote, as he
boxed and rode, as he fought in the mud of Flanders, as the ideal
sporting Englishman of our old, heroic type.

The ancient mystery of verse is so deeply based on tradition that it is
not surprising that all the strange contrivances of twentieth-century
warfare have been found too crabbed for our poets to use. When great
Marlborough, as Addison puts it, "examin'd all the dreadful scenes of
war" at Blenheim, he was really in closer touch with Marathon than with
the tanks and gas of Ypres. But there is one military implement so
beautiful in itself, and so magical in the nature of its servic