in The London Spectator
IN this last hour, before the bugles blare
The summons of the dawn, we turn again
To you, dear country, you whom unaware,
Through summer years of idle selfishness,
We still have loved—who loved us none the less,
Knowing the destined hour would find us men.
O thrill and laughter of the busy town!
O flower valleys, trees against the skies,
Wild moor and woodland, glade and sweeping down,
O land of our desire! like men asleep
We have let pass the years, nor felt you creep
So close into our hearts’ dear sanctities.
So, we are dreamers; but our dreams are cast
Henceforward in a more heroic mold;
We have kept faith with our immortal past.
Knights—we have found the lady of our love;
Minstrels—have heard great harmonies above
The lyrics that enraptured us of old.
The dawn’s aglow with luster of the sun
O love, O burning passion, that has made
Our day illustrious till its hours are done—
Fire our dull hearts, that, in our sun’s eclipse,
When Death stoops low to kiss us on the lips,
He still may find us singing, unafraid.
One thing we know, that love so greatly spent
Dies not when lovers die: From hand to hand
We pass the torch and perish—well content,
If in dark years to come our countrymen
Feel the divine flame leap in them again,
And so remember us and understand.
“BLIGHTY” AND “GONE WEST”
British soldiers in France have developed a terminology that is plain to them, but confusing to civilians. They speak of “Blighty,” for example, and of “Gone West.” These two terms express hopes—Blighty meaning home; in common acceptance, home for rest and recuperation. “Gone West” means gone from the east with its conflict to the refuge of death, where peace waits in the glory of sunset.
“Blighty” is of Hindu origin. British officers in South Africa who had served in India used the word, which is an Anglicized form of the Indian word “vilayti,” meaning European. Englishmen being about the only Europeans the natives knew, its application narrowed down to England only; and the army fell into a way of using it as a synonym of home. When the troops from India came into action early in the war, their wounded were sent to the nearest English great hospital, at Brighton, just across the channel. The consonance of Brighton and vilayti or Blighty was so close that these men used their own word as a matter of course, and in this way it floated into general use.