The Great War in Verse and Prose

by Unknown

THE AIR MEN

(This poem was written before 1914, but it so well portrays the conditions which prevailed in the last year of the Great War that it is here reproduced.)

We brought great ships to birth,

We builded towns and towers—

Lords of the sea and earth,

Soon shall the sky be ours.

Soon shall our navies drift

Like swallows down the wind,

Shall wheel and swoop and lift,

Leaving the clouds behind.

The stars our keels shall know.

The eagle, as it flies,

Shall scream to see us go

Swift moving through the skies.

High o'er the mountain-steep

Our wingèd fleets shall sail.

The serried squadrons sweep,

White-pinioned down the gale.

We are the lords of the land,

We built us towns and towers.

The sea has felt our hand—

Soon shall the sky be ours.

Norah Holland

From "Spun-yarn and Spindrift"—By permission of the Author and of J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., Toronto

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