These are chiefly songs of women's work, but there is a Christmas song for soldiers. The music of life is stilled to-day. Only the bugle note is heard. To the men in the trenches it means action, organized and perfected; to us at home it repeats the call. These songs are bound in crimson for that is the colour of courage; and in gold which signifies the strength and the joy of life which is work.
THE NEW JOAN
THE VISION
A soldier's soul returns the centuries down—
Radiance again! Love's gleaming mystic mate,
She who was burned for witchcraft and for state
In the old market-place of Rouen town.
To-day I met her spirit on the Earth,
And felt a joyous light dark spaces fill;
I knew this troubled planet called her still
Upon the wheel of reincarnate birth.
"Behold a legion of all-souls," she said,
"Who ride again for country and for King,
And with them, as the ardent sun with spring,
See the enchanted ones that life calls dead."
"Woman and man, renewing faith's old tryst,
Breast, shuddering, the deeps of this last war,
And high above them gleams the stranger-star,
Silver in blood-red skies—the grail of Christ."