BETWEEN the hedges of the centuries A thousand phantom armies go and come, While Reason whispers as each marches past, “This is the last of wars—this is the last!” —Lieut. Gilbert Waterhouse.
GREAT POEMS OF THE WORLD WAR
Edited, With Introduction, Notes and Original Matter, By W. D. EATON
CHICAGO T. S. DENISON & COMPANY PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1918 By EBEN H. NORRIS under title “The War in Verse and Prose” Copyright, 1922, by T. S. Denison & Company
“Great Poems of the World War”
PREFACE
N a fateful day in 1914, without a warning flash or tremor, there fell upon the world such a blast of war as human reason could not have foreglimpsed, nor Apocalyptic vision raised, to appall the souls of men. Twenty-seven nations took the shock and were rocked to their foundations. Eleven were caught and knotted in the maddest agony of conflict that ever was known. Through four years the winds of destruction swirled and roared around the monstrous welter, before the evil forces failed and their exhaustion brought a breathing space such as lies at the heart of a typhoon. Around the widening edges of that space they still muttered for a while in gusts of blood and fire, slowly receding, slowly dying. But the great storm is gone; the long night that seemed the night of doom is over.
Its epic has not been written. The time is too near us, the motive too deep, the theme too vast. But out of the dark came many voices, voices of lamentation, of home and love and hope and heroism and loftiest ideality, of romance, of strange comedy. These had their inspiration from a gigantic spectacle of elemental passions in cross-play, from the thoughts and emotions not of a single people, but of all that were fighting for the life and light of civilization. Poets great and poets minor followed the war or fought in it, and expressed its spirit with a personal, passionate fidelity impossible to historians.
It would not be well were all these voices lost. Many are worth fixation where they may be heard again at will, and that is the reason for and purpose of this book. The finest and truest of them are given here.
In making selection, availability for recitation has been considered. There is no better way to stir the mind or fix the memory than by spoken words of beauty in rhythmic cadence, especially in schools. It is hoped they will be effective in such uses.
Readers will find in the captain notes many helpful sidelights upon topics and personalities. These will commend themselves for their own sake.
