I have just been reading a letter from a nurse out in Palestine describing the little wooden crosses above fallen British soldiers which now star the Mount of Olives. The poetry of the ordinary crops out everywhere to-day; we are living on higher levels than we realize. For hundreds of years the future generations will weave legends round us, making us appear titanic spirit-people, just as we have clothed with almost unearthly splendour the Crusaders of the Dark Ages.
This is a pleasant May evening. The fields are golden with buttercups. Above the singing of the birds I can hear a low droning as of bees among flowers; but the droning is of homing aeroplanes. This is the kind of weather and country in which it would not be unbeautiful to die.
When I went down this morning to the barn in which my section is stationed, I found notice printed on the door, on either side a British and American flag-and underneath a luridly illustrated Sunday magazine selection of extracts from The Glory of the Trenches. A small world, isn't it?
I have been reading a book lately that would interest you; it's by Ford Madox Hueffer and is called On Heaven. It consists of a number of poems written while on active service. He's managed to put down in a rough and tumble of words a good many of our hungers and adorations. I hadn't realized before I read him how very much of the conversation of our soldiers is an exchange of confidences about the women they love or have loved. I believe every man at the Front has a hope of the girl he will be true to some day, and a fear lest——
One of Hueffer's poems on the subject is very beautiful. It starts this way:
“In Chepstow stands a castle;
My love and I went there;
The foxgloves on the wall all heard
Her footsteps on the stair.
The sun was high in heaven