Father of the thunder,
Flinger of the flame,
Searing stars asunder,
Hallowed be Thy Name!
By the sweet-sung quiring
Sister bullets hum,
By our fiercest firing,
May Thy Kingdom come!
By Thy strong apostle
Of the Maxim gun,
By his pentecostal
Flame, Thy Will be done!
Give us, Lord, good feeding
To Thy battles sped—
Flesh, white grained and bleeding,
Give for daily bread!
Frances Cornford
The daughter of Francis Darwin, third son of Charles Darwin, Mrs. Frances Macdonald Cornford, whose husband is a Fellow and Lecturer of Trinity College, was born in 1886. She has published three volumes of unaffected lyrical verse, the most recent of which, Spring Morning, was brought out by The Poetry Bookshop in 1915.
PREËXISTENCE
I laid me down upon the shore
And dreamed a little space;
I heard the great waves break and roar;
The sun was on my face.
My idle hands and fingers brown
Played with the pebbles grey;
The waves came up, the waves went down,
Most thundering and gay.