"I confess that Sutherland gives me pause," he said. "For skill in rhyming, Sutherland deserves all praise--he is ingenious and correct--but such is the faultiness of his ear that he flouts the fundamentals of prosody in each of his four stanzas. In fact, Sutherland's poetry, regarded as such, is excruciating. He has ideas, though not of a particularly exalted character; and even if he had given us something better worthy to be called a poem, his lamentable failure in metre would have debarred him from victory. His last verse contains an objectionable suspicion we might associate rather with a commercial traveller or small tradesman, than with one of us."
Well, Sutherland's wasn't bad really, though rather rocky from a poetical point of view, as the Doctor truly said.
KHAKI FOR EVER
BY SUTHERLAND
Loud roars the dreadful cannon above the bloody field,
While, like the lightning, through the smoke's dim shroud
The tongues of flame are flashing, where, concealed,
The vainglorious enemy's battery doth vaunt and laugh aloud,
Thinking that men of British race are going to yield.
Poor German cannon-fodder! Little do they know
That those who wear khaki have never yet
Wherever, at the call of Bellona, they may go,
Surrendered to a lesser foe than Death. They've met
Far finer fighters than the Boche, and made their life's-blood flow.
Whether upon the open battle-front, or in a trench,
Or in a fort, or keeping communications,
With such a leader as great General French
The British khaki boys defeat all nations,
And in the foeman's gore their glittering bayonets they quench.
And they will win, for right is on their side;
And when they do, the neutrals shall not share
The rich-earned booty the Allies divide;
For, as they would not sail in and fight, it is not fair
That they should win the fruits of this bloody tide.
We could see what the Doctor meant about Sutherland's poem--it didn't flow exactly; but it might have been worse. Then Dr. Dunston picked up Mitchell's poem and frowned; and Peacock frowned; and Fortescue also frowned. We didn't know what was going to happen, for the Doctor made no preliminary remarks on the subject of Mitchell. He just gave his glasses a hitch and glared over the top of Mitchell's effort and then read it out.
OLD ENGLAND FOR EVER
BY MITCHELL
Oh, now doth Death line his dead chaps with steel,
The swords of soldiers are his teeth, his fangs,
And now he feasts, mousing the flesh of man!
Rejoice, ye men of England, ring your bells.
King George, your King and England's, doth approach,
Commander of this hot, malicious day!
Our armour, that marched hence so silver bright,
Hither returns all gilt with German blood;
Our colours do return in those same hands
That did display them when we first marched forth;
And, like a jolly troup of huntsmen, come
Our lusty English all with purple hands,
Dyed in the slaughter of their Teuton foes.
But to their home they will no more return
Till Belgium's free and France is also free;
Then to their pale, their white-faced shore,
Whose foot spurns back the ocean's roaring tides
And coops from other lands her islanders--
Even to that England, hedged in with the main,
That water-walled bulwark still secure,
Will they return and hear our thunderous cheers.
But Belgium first, unhappy, stricken land,
Which has, we know, and all too well we know,
Sluiced out her innocent soul through streams of blood,
Which blood, like sacrificing Abel's, cries,
Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth,
To us for justice and rough chastisement,
And, by the glorious worth of our descent,
Our arm shall do it, or our life be spent.
The Doctor stopped suddenly and flung his eyes over us. Naturally we were staggered and full of amazement to think of a hard blade like Mitchell producing such glorious stuff. Any fool could see it was poetry of the classiest kind.