“Lay me to sleep in sheltering flame,
O Master of the Hidden Fire.
Wash pure my heart and cleanse for me
My soul’s desire!”
“Aye! that’s the Fire to warm our bare castles in the air--with it the endless spaces cannot be dreary,” commented the observer to the tide as he stretched himself out to bunk in vigil, upon one of the aëroplane’s linen wings, while the tired young pilot, for the earlier part of the night, enjoyed the luxury of a tent.
Yes, the same fire it was which burned in the breast of Iver Davenport, now, perhaps, lying out in a shell-hole in No Man’s Land--he who “had come nearer to God” since he volunteered; the same which had inspired Olive, child of luxury, the modern Maid, upon a humble field, to “carry on” in the teeth of distaste and weariness; the same, in degree, which upheld her boy cousin, leading a blind horse hitched to a heavy timber through a shipyard, and not reveling in his novel “job”!
“In flame of sunrise bathe my mind,
O Master of the Hidden Fire,
That when I wake, clear-eyed may be
My soul’s desire.”