class="poem">All is our sister and brother, as once St. Francis said;
The little stones in the river, the bright sun overhead,
And newts, and the spawn of fishes, and the unnamed mighty dead.

This is the ballad for Herman. O friend, may good befall!
There is never a star so distant, there is never a creature small,
But living and knowing and loving in our brain we hold them all.

FRANCE

April 1915

Great ever, with the hope that seeks the stars;
The brain clear-cold, like ice; the soul like flame;
The spirit beating at the physical bars;
The reason guiding all—oh, there we name
France!

A country that can think, and thinking, acts;
A country that can act, and acting, dreams;
That neither bears the tyranny of facts,
Nor of its own dear hopes, nor of what seems,

But still, clear-visioned, treats with things that are;
Yet—seer, prophet, priest of life-to-be—
Leaps to the visionary days afar,
And all the splendour she will never see.

School of the spirit, chastening, yet a spur
For all that men aspire to: as of old
Athens held up the torch, and did incur
Persia, with her fierce armies manifold,

So France against the evil strikes and strives
For liberty, and we of island race,
—Humbled a little by our careless lives—
Glory to stand beside her in our place,

Glory that we are one in hope and aim
With her from whom in blood and agony
The second gift of human freedom came
Through Terror and the red Gethsemane.

On her fair, ravaged borders stand her guns,
She has thrown away the scabbards, bared the swords,
And, snatching laughter out of death, her sons
Challenge high Fate to show what life affords—
France!

ILGAR'S SONG

(From King Monmouth)

O love that dwells in the innermost heart of man
Secret and dark and still,
Like a bird in the core of a green mid-summer tree—
Height upon height and depth upon depth where never the eye can see
The brown bird, hidden and still.

O Love that is wild and eager, sun-lit and free
Like a seagull that turns in the sunlight above the sea;
Between the sea and the sky it flashes and turns,
And the sun on its wings is white,
While sharply and shrill by the headland the keen wind sings
Where the grass is salt and grey
With the beating winter spray,
And the seagull sweeps and soars on magnificent wings.

Love that is like a flame,
Held in the hollow hand,
So dear and precious a thing
As a light in a stranger land,
As a flickering candle to him who wanders by night.

Love that is wide as the dawn
To the eyes of night-bound men;
And the evil ghosts and the goblins it puts to flight,
And stealthy creatures of dark that rustle and creep,
And elfins and witches and all such devil's game
That cannot live in the light,
They squeak and gibber and cheep,
And vanish like shadows before the splendour of day.

Love that has wide, white wings like a flying swan
—Oh what a noble span,
From tip to tip they are more than the height of a man
And curved like the sails of a boat—
When over the evening river the wild swan flies
The curve of those wings is like the arch of the skies
Over the shielded earth.
Love is most like a bird,
For birds have least of the dust that gave them birth,
They soar and poise and float,
They wheel and swerve and skim,
And their wings are strong to the wind, and swift to the light,
And their voice is a promise of dawn while yet it is night,
And their song is a pæan of hope before it is spring,
And the song of the bird to his mate is lyrical love.

Love is secret and holy, a spiritual thing,
Dark and silent and still
In the heart of man, as a treasure is hid in a shrine.
Love is splendid and fierce, as the summer sun
Drenches the sea and the sky with its blaze and shine,
Till every pebble is hot to the touch of the hand,
And the air is a-shimmer with heat o'er the hazy land—
Yet Love is not any of these things, Love is of one
With the strange, half-guessed at, vast, creative plan
We cannot see with our eyes nor understand—
Yet is Love pitiful too, for Love is of man.

THE INN

I

Friendship's an inn the roads of life afford
—I'll speak to you in metaphor, my friend—
And there a tired man his way may wend,
And, coming in, sit down beside the board,
Out of the dust and glare, and boldly send
For drink and victuals; haply cross his knees,
And in the cool dark parlour take his ease,
And gossip of his journey and its end.

That's friendship; there is neither right of place
Nor landlord duties, just the short hour's stay
From the sun and weariness between those kind
And quiet walls; and when the road's to face
Stony and long again, we take our way
Keeping that respite gratefully in mind.

THE INN

II

We take our pack, and jog our way again
Towards the windy sunset and the night;
The inn is now behind us, out of sight,
Showing no welcome shine of windowpane,
But dark and silent standing by the way
As we go forward, seeing mile on mile
Sink out of sight—just for a little while
We rested, in the middle of the day.

Is there an end at last, and shall we reach,
By the faint glimmer of new-risen stars,
Our house at last, and find the heart-repose
Which is the ultimate desire of each
Poor traveller—ah! shall they drop the bars,
And the doors open? Dear my friend, who knows?

"TO-DAY I MISS YOU"

To-day I miss you ... "Only for to-day,
Some little matter of hours and nothing more."
That at least the worldly-wise folk say,
Who've never waited for the opening door,
The greeting look, the known step on the floor;
Who've never missed a loved one like a lover.

To-day I miss you. What to-morrow brings
Is the other side of all the stars, God knows!
Only to have you here, now evening swings
Its quiet shadow round the globe again,
And in our talk of old familiar things,
And in familiar gestures, turn of brain,
Looks, tone of voice, I may discern again
That union from which alone love grows.

We'd close the curtains;—while the world outside,
Noisily autumn, makes a sense of peace
Deeper within,—open the bookcase wide
And take a book out; then another book,
And then another.... "Here's a favourite, look!
We cannot pass him." ... Then from reading cease,
Gossip and laugh, with finger in the page,
And challenge thought with thought, and mind with mind
Each speaking freely, that we might increase
Some knowledge to which, singly, we were blind.

So goes the evening. Side by side we stand,
Dear friends and brothers, till, a sudden pause,
Or kindly, almost careless touch of hands,
Swings us to face each other, and we feel
Those deepest stirrings of the human heart
Man has