In Flanders Fields | Page 7

that the world was bright,?That your path was short and your task was light;?The path, though short, was perhaps the best?And the toil was sweet, that it led to rest."
The Pilgrims
An uphill path, sun-gleams between the showers,?Where every beam that broke the leaden sky?Lit other hills with fairer ways than ours;?Some clustered graves where half our memories lie;?And one grim Shadow creeping ever nigh:
And this was Life.
Wherein we did another's burden seek,?The tired feet we helped upon the road,?The hand we gave the weary and the weak,?The miles we lightened one another's load,?When, faint to falling, onward yet we strode:
This too was Life.
Till, at the upland, as we turned to go?Amid fair meadows, dusky in the night,?The mists fell back upon the road below;?Broke on our tired eyes the western light;?The very graves were for a moment bright:
And this was Death.
The Shadow of the Cross
At the drowsy dusk when the shadows creep?From the golden west, where the sunbeams sleep,
An angel mused: "Is there good or ill?In the mad world's heart, since on Calvary's hill
'Round the cross a mid-day twilight fell?That darkened earth and o'ershadowed hell?"
Through the streets of a city the angel sped;?Like an open scroll men's hearts he read.
In a monarch's ear his courtiers lied?And humble faces hid hearts of pride.
Men's hate waxed hot, and their hearts grew cold,?As they haggled and fought for the lust of gold.
Despairing, he cried, "After all these years?Is there naught but hatred and strife and tears?"
He found two waifs in an attic bare;?-- A single crust was their meagre fare --
One strove to quiet the other's cries,?And the love-light dawned in her famished eyes
As she kissed the child with a motherly air:?"I don't need mine, you can have my share."
Then the angel knew that the earthly cross?And the sorrow and shame were not wholly loss.
At dawn, when hushed was earth's busy hum?And men looked not for their Christ to come,
From the attic poor to the palace grand,?The King and the beggar went hand in hand.
The Night Cometh
Cometh the night. The wind falls low,?The trees swing slowly to and fro:?Around the church the headstones grey?Cluster, like children strayed away?But found again, and folded so.
No chiding look doth she bestow:?If she is glad, they cannot know;?If ill or well they spend their day,
Cometh the night.
Singing or sad, intent they go;?They do not see the shadows grow;?"There yet is time," they lightly say,?"Before our work aside we lay";?Their task is but half-done, and lo!
Cometh the night.
In Due Season
If night should come and find me at my toil,?When all Life's day I had, tho' faintly, wrought,?And shallow furrows, cleft in stony soil?Were all my labour: Shall I count it naught
If only one poor gleaner, weak of hand,?Shall pick a scanty sheaf where I have sown??"Nay, for of thee the Master doth demand?Thy work: the harvest rests with Him alone."
John McCrae
An Essay in Character by Sir Andrew Macphail
I
In Flanders Fields
"In Flanders Fields", the piece of verse from which this little book takes its title, first appeared in `Punch' in the issue of December 8th, 1915. At the time I was living in Flanders at a convent in front of Locre, in shelter of Kemmel Hill, which lies seven miles south and slightly west of Ypres. The piece bore no signature, but it was unmistakably from the hand of John McCrae.
From this convent of women which was the headquarters of the 6th Canadian Field Ambulance, I wrote to John McCrae, who was then at Boulogne, accusing him of the authorship, and furnished him with evidence. From memory -- since at the front one carries one book only -- I quoted to him another piece of his own verse, entitled "The Night Cometh":
"Cometh the night. The wind falls low,?The trees swing slowly to and fro;?Around the church the headstones grey?Cluster, like children stray'd away,?But found again, and folded so."
It will be observed at once by reference to the text that in form the two poems are identical. They contain the same number of lines and feet as surely as all sonnets do. Each travels upon two rhymes?with the members of a broken couplet in widely separated refrain. To the casual reader this much is obvious, but there are many subtleties in the verse which made the authorship inevitable. It was a form upon which he had worked for years, and made his own. When the moment arrived the medium was ready. No other medium could have so well conveyed the thought.
This familiarity with his verse was not a matter of accident. For many years I was editor of the `University Magazine',?and those who are curious about such things may discover?that one half of the poems contained in this little book?were first published upon its pages. This magazine had its origin in McGill University, Montreal, in the year 1902. Four years