Giant Hours with Poet Preachers

by William L. Stidger

RHYMES OF A RED CROSS MAN

Here it is that we find a consciousness of the Eternal creeping through
the smoke and din and glare. Here, like the hard, dangerous life of the
Alaskan trails, only harder and more dangerous; here amid war in "The
Fool" we catch six last lines that thrill us:

"He died with the glory of faith in his eyes,
And the glory of love in his heart.
And though there's never a grave to tell,
Nor a cross to mark his fall,
Thank God we know that he "batted well"
In the last great Game of all."

Rhymes of a Red Cross Man.

And even amid the terrible thunder of war the "Lark" sings, as Service reminds us in his poem of that name, sings and points to heaven:

"Pure heart of song! do you not know
That we are making earth a hell?
Or is it that you try to show
Life still is joy and all is well?
Brave little wings! Ah, not in vain
You beat into that bit of blue:
Lo! we who pant in war's red rain
Lift shining eyes, see Heaven too!"

Rhymes of a Red Cross Man.

To close this study of Service, which has run from the hard battle ground of the Alaskan trails to the harder battle ground of France; which has run from a study of white peaks and white lives, to high peaks and high hopes, through sin and death to heaven and the Father himself, I quote the closing lines of Service's "The Song of the Wage Slave," which will remind the reader in tone and spirit of Markham's "The Man with the Hoe":

"Master, I've filled my contract, wrought in thy many lands;
Not by my sins wilt thou judge me, but by the work of my hands.
Master, I've done thy bidding, and the light is low in the west,
And the long, long shift is over—Master, I've earned it—Rest."

[Illustration: RUPERT BROOKE.]

IX

RUPERT BROOKE
[Footnote: The poetical selections from the writings of Rupert Brooke
appearing in this chapter are used by permission, and are taken from
The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke, published by John Lane Company,
New York.]

PREACHER OF FRIENDSHIP, LOVE, COUNTRY, GODS, AND GOD

Wilfred Gibson expressed it for us all; voiced the sorrow and the hope in the death of Rupert Brooke, a victim of the Hun as well as that other giant of art, the Rheims Cathedral; expressed it in these lines written shortly after Rupert Brooke died:

"He's gone.
I do not understand.
I only know
That, as he turned to go
And waved his hand,
In his young eyes a sudden glory shone,
And I was dazzled by a sunset glow—
And he was gone,"

Thanks, Wilfred Gibson, you who have made articulate the voice of the downtrodden of the world, the poetic "Fires" which have lighted up with sudden glow the slums, the slag heaps, the factories, the coal mines, and hidden common ways of folks who toil; thanks that you have also beautifully lighted up the "End of the Trail" of your friend and our friend, Poet Rupert Brooke; lighted it with the light that shines from eternity. We owe you debt unpayable for that.

And you yourself, war-dead poet, you sang your end, full knowing that it would come, as it did on foreign soil, far from the England that you loved and voiced so wondrously. And now these lines that you wrote of your own possible passing have new meaning for us who remain to mourn your going:

"If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;
A body of England's breathing, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home."

The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke.

And so here, even in this hymn of your passing, you have given a striking illustration off one of your strongest characteristics, love of homeland. Poet of Youth who left us so early in life, take your place along with Byron, and Shelley, and our own Seeger—a quartette of immortals, whose voices were heard, but, like the horns of Elfland, "faintly blowing" when they were hushed. Though you were but a youthful voice, yet left you poetry worth listening to, and preached a gospel that will make a better world, though it had not gone far enough to save the world.