Part 20

And Naples, with her sapphire arc Of bay, her perfect sweep of shore; Above her, like a demon stark, The dark fire-mountain evermore Looming portentous, as of yore; Fair Capri with her cliffs and caves; Salerno drowsing 'mid her vines And olives, and the shattered shrines Of Paestum where the gray ghosts tread, And where the wilding rose still waves As when by Greek girls garlanded.

But hark! What sound the ear dismays, Mine Italy, mine Italy? Thou that wert wrapt in peace, the haze Of loveliness spread over thee! Yet since the grapple needs must be, I who have wandered in the night With Dante, Petrarch's Laura known, Seen Vallombrosa's groves breeze-blown, Met Angelo and Raffael, Against iconoclastic might In this grim hour must wish thee well!

Clinton Scollard

ON THE ITALIAN FRONT, MCMXVI

"I will die cheering, if I needs must die; So shall my last breath write upon my lips Viva Italia! when my spirit slips Down the great darkness from the mountain sky; And those who shall behold me where I lie Shall murmur: 'Look, you! how his spirit dips From glory into glory! the eclipse Of death is vanquished! Lo, his victor-cry!'

"Live, thou, upon my lips, Italia mine, The sacred death-cry of my frozen clay! Let thy dear light from my dead body shine And to the passer-by thy message say: 'Ecco! though heaven has made my skies divine, My sons' love sanctifies my soil for aye!'"

George Edward Woodberry

AUSTRALIA TO ENGLAND

By all the deeds to Thy dear glory done, By all the life blood, spilt to serve Thy need, By all the fettered lives Thy touch hath freed, By all Thy dream in us anew begun; By all the guerdon English sire to son Hath given of highest vision, kingliest deed, By all Thine agony, of God decreed For trial and strength, our fate with Thine is one.

Still dwells Thy spirit in our hearts and lips, Honour and life we hold from none but Thee, And if we live Thy pensioners no more But seek a nation's might of men and ships, 'T is but that when the world is black with war Thy sons may stand beside Thee strong and free.

Archibald T. Strong

August, 1914

CANADA TO ENGLAND

Great names of thy great captains gone before Beat with our blood, who have that blood of thee: Raleigh and Grenville, Wolfe, and all the free Fine souls who dared to front a world in war. Such only may outreach the envious years Where feebler crowns and fainter stars remove, Nurtured in one remembrance and one love Too high for passion and too stern for tears.

O little isle our fathers held for home, Not, not alone thy standards and thy hosts Lead where thy sons shall follow, Mother Land: Quick as the north wind, ardent as the foam, Behold, behold the invulnerable ghosts Of all past greatnesses about thee stand.

Marjorie L.C. Pickthall

LANGEMARCK AT YPRES

This is the ballad of Langemarck, A story of glory and might; Of the vast Hun horde, and Canada's part In the great grim fight.

It was April fair on the Flanders Fields, But the dreadest April then That ever the years, in their fateful flight, Had brought to this world of men.

North and east, a monster wall, The mighty Hun ranks lay, With fort on fort, and iron-ringed trench, Menacing, grim and gray.

And south and west, like a serpent of fire, Serried the British lines, And in between, the dying and dead, And the stench of blood, and the trampled mud, On the fair, sweet Belgian vines.

And far to the eastward, harnessed and taut, Like a scimitar, shining and keen, Gleaming out of that ominous gloom, Old France's hosts were seen.

When out of the grim Hun lines one night, There rolled a sinister smoke;-- A strange, weird cloud, like a pale, green shroud, And death lurked in its cloak.

On a fiend-like wind it curled along Over the brave French ranks, Like a monster tree its vapours spread, In hideous, burning banks Of poisonous fumes that scorched the night With their sulphurous demon danks.

And men went mad with horror, and fled From that terrible, strangling death, That seemed to sear both body and soul With its baleful, flaming breath.

Till even the little dark men of the south, Who feared neither God nor man, Those fierce, wild fighters of Afric's steppes, Broke their battalions and ran:--

Ran as they never had run before, Gasping, and fainting for breath; For they knew 't was no human foe that slew; And that hideous smoke meant death.

Then red in the reek of that evil cloud, The Hun swept over the plain; And the murderer's dirk did its monster work, 'Mid the scythe-like shrapnel rain;