THE WORKS OF
RICHARD LE GALLIENNE
Robert Louis Stevenson: An Elegy, and Other Poems, Mainly Personal.
English Poems. Revised.
Rudyard Kipling: A Criticism.
George Meredith: Some Characteristics. With a bibliography (much enlarged) by John Lane.
The Quest of the Golden Girl: A Romance.
The Romance of Zion Chapel.
The Worshipper of the Image: A Tragic Fairy Tale.
Sleeping Beauty and Other Prose Fancies.
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: A Paraphrase from Several Literary Translations. New edition with fifty additional quatrains. With cover design by Will Bradley.
Retrospective Reviews: A Literary Log. (New edition.) 2 vols.
Prose Fancies. First series. With portrait of the author by Wilson Steer.
Prose Fancies. Second series.
Travels in England. New edition.
New Poems.
Attitudes and Avowals. With Some Retrospective Reviews.
The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems.
THE
SILK-HAT SOLDIER
AND OTHER POEMS IN
WAR TIME
BY
RICHARD LE GALLIENNE
NEW YORK—JOHN LANE COMPANY
LONDON—JOHN LANE—THE BODLEY HEAD
MCMXV
Copyright, 1915, by
JOHN LANE COMPANY
Press of
J. J. Little & Ives Co.
New York
To
His Majesty
ALBERT I.
King of the Belgians
THE HEROIC CAPTAIN
OF AN
HEROIC PEOPLE
CONTENTS
| PAGE | |
| To Belgium | [9] |
| The Silk-Hat Soldier | [11] |
| The Cry of the Little Peoples | [14] |
| The Illusion of War | [20] |
| Christmas in War-time | [22] |
| “Soldier Going to the War” | [29] |
| The Rainbow | [30] |
TO BELGIUM
Our tears, our songs, our laurels—what are these
To thee in thy Gethsemane of loss,
Stretched in thine unimagined agonies
On Hell's last engine of the Iron Cross.
For such a world as this that thou shouldst die
Is price too vast—yet, Belgium, hadst thou sold
Thyself, O then had fled from out the earth
Honour for ever, and left only Gold.
Nor diest thou—for soon shalt thou awake,
And, lifted high on our victorious shields,
Watch the new sunrise driving for your sons
The hated German shadow from your fields.
“British colonists resident in London volunteer, and not even silk hats are doffed before training begins”
—New York Times
THE SILK-HAT SOLDIER
I saw him in a picture, and I felt I'd like to cry—
He stood in line,
The man “for mine,”
A tall silk-hatted “guy”—
Right on the call,
Silk hat and all,
He'd hurried to the cry—
For he loves England well enough for England to die.
I've seen King Harry's helmet in the Abbey hanging high—
The one he wore
At Agincourt;
But braver to my eye
That city toff
Too keen to doff
His stove-pipe—bless him—why?
For he loves England well enough for England to die.
And other fellows in that line had come too on the fly,
Their joys and toys,
Brave English boys,
For good and all put by;
O you brave best,
Teach all the rest
How pure the heart and high
When one loves England well enough for England to die.
One threw his cricket-bat aside, one left the ink to dry;
All peace and play
He's put away,
And bid his love good-bye—
O mother mine!
O sweetheart mine!
No man of yours am I—
If I love not England well enough for England to die.
I guess it strikes a chill somewhere, the bravest won't deny,
All that you love,
Away to shove,
And set your teeth to die;
But better dead,
When all is said,
Than lapped in peace to lie—
If we love not England well enough for England to die.
THE CRY OF THE LITTLE PEOPLES
The Cry of the Little Peoples went up to God in vain;
The Czech and the Pole, and the Finn, and the Schleswig Dane:
We ask but a little portion of the green, ambitious earth;
Only to sow and sing and reap in the land of our birth.
We ask not coaling stations, nor ports in the China seas,
We leave to the big child-nations such rivalries as these.
We have learned the lesson of Time, and we know three things of worth;
Only to sow and sing and reap in the land of our birth.
O leave us little margins, waste ends of land and sea,
A little grass, and a hill or two, and a shadowing tree;
O leave us our little rivers that sweetly catch the sky,
To drive our mills, and to carry our wood, and to ripple by.
Once long ago, as you, with hollow pursuit of fame,
We filled all the shaking world with the sound of our name,
But now are we glad to rest, our battles and boasting done,
Glad just to sow and sing and reap in our share of the sun.
Of this O will ye rob us,—with a foolish mighty hand,
Add with such cruel sorrow, so small a land to your land?
So might a boy rejoice him to conquer a hive of bees,
Overcome ants in battle,—we are scarcely more mighty than these—
So might a cruel heart hear a nightingale singing alone,
And say, “I am mighty! See how the singing stops with a stone!”
Yea, he were mighty indeed, mighty to crush and to gain;
But the bee and the ant and the bird were the mighty of brain.
And what shall you gain if you take us and bind us and beat us with thongs,
And drive us to sing underground in a whisper our sad little songs?
Forbid us the very use of our heart's own nursery tongue—
Is this to be strong, ye nations, is this to be strong?
Your vulgar battles to fight, and your grocery conquests to keep,
For this shall we break our hearts, for this shall our old men weep?
What gain in the day of battle—to the Russ, to the German, what gain,
The Czech, and the Pole, and the Finn, and the Schleswig Dane?
The Cry of the Little Peoples goes up to God in vain,
For the world is given over to the cruel sons of Cain;
The hand that would bless us is weak, and the hand that would break us is strong,
And the power of pity is nought but the power of a song.
The dreams that our fathers dreamed to-day are laughter and dust,
And nothing at all in the world is left for a man to trust;
Let us hope no more, or dream, or prophesy, or pray,
For the iron world no less will crash on its iron way;
Yea! nothing is left but to watch, with a helpless, pitying eye,
The kind old aims for the world, and the kind old fashions die.
THE ILLUSION OF WAR
War
I abhor,
And yet how sweet
The sound along the marching street
Of drum and fife, and I forget
Wet eyes of widows, and forget
Broken old mothers, and the whole
Dark butchery without a soul.
Without a soul—save this bright drink
Of heady music, sweet as hell;
And even my peace-abiding feet
Go marching with the marching street,
For yonder, yonder goes the fife,
And what care I for human life!
The tears fill my astonished eyes
And my full heart is like to break,
And yet 'tis all embannered lies,
A dream those little drummers make.
O it is wickedness to clothe
Yon hideous grinning thing that stalks
Hidden in music, like a queen
That in a garden of glory walks,
Till good men love the thing they loathe.
Art, thou hast many infamies,
But not an infamy like this;
O snap the fife and still the drum,
And show the monster as she is.