The Silk-Hat Soldier

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Title: The Silk-Hat Soldier
And Other Poems in War Time
Author: Richard le Gallienne
Release Date: September 19, 2006 [EBook #19313]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
? START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SILK-HAT SOLDIER ***
Produced by Jason Isbell, Daniel Griffith and the Online?Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
THE WORKS OF RICHARD LE GALLIENNE
Robert Louis Stevenson: An Elegy, and Other Poems, Mainly Personal.
English Poems. Revised.
Rudyard Kipling: A Criticism.
George Meredith: Some Characteristics.?With a bibliography (much enlarged) by John Lane.
The Quest of the Golden Girl: A Romance.
The Romance of Zion Chapel.
The Worshipper of the Image: A Tragic Fairy Tale.
Sleeping Beauty and Other Prose Fancies.
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:?A Paraphrase from Several Literary Translations.?New edition with fifty additional quatrains.?With cover design by Will Bradley.
Retrospective Reviews: A Literary Log.?(New edition.) 2 vols.
Prose Fancies. First series.?With portrait of the author by Wilson Steer.
Prose Fancies. Second series.
Travels in England. New edition.
New Poems.
Attitudes and Avowals. With Some Retrospective Reviews.
The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems.
THE SILK-HAT SOLDIER
AND OTHER POEMS IN WAR TIME
BY RICHARD LE GALLIENNE
NEW YORK--JOHN LANE COMPANY?LONDON--JOHN LANE--THE BODLEY HEAD?MCMXV
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY?JOHN LANE COMPANY
Press of?J. J. Little & Ives Co.?New York
To His Majesty
ALBERT I.
King of the Belgians
THE HEROIC CAPTAIN OF AN HEROIC PEOPLE
CONTENTS
PAGE
To Belgium 9
The Silk-Hat Soldier 11
The Cry of the Little Peoples 15
The Illusion of War 20
Christmas in War-time 22
"Soldier Going to the War" 29
The Rainbow 30
TO BELGIUM
Our tears, our songs, our laurels--what are these?To thee in thy Gethsemane of loss,?Stretched in thine unimagined agonies?On Hell's last engine of the Iron Cross.
For such a world as this that thou shouldst die?Is price too vast--yet, Belgium, hadst thou sold?Thyself, O then had fled from out the earth?Honour for ever, and left only Gold.
Nor diest thou--for soon shalt thou awake,?And, lifted high on our victorious shields,?Watch the new sunrise driving for your sons?The hated German shadow from your fields.
"British colonists resident in London volunteer, and?not even silk hats are doffed before training begins"
--New York Times
THE SILK-HAT SOLDIER
I saw him in a picture, and I felt I'd like to cry--
He stood in line,?The man "for mine,"?A tall silk-hatted "guy"--
Right on the call,?Silk hat and all,?He'd hurried to the cry--?For he loves England well enough for England to die.
I've seen King Harry's helmet in the Abbey hanging high--
The one he wore?At Agincourt;?But braver to my eye
That city toff?Too keen to doff?His stove-pipe--bless him--why??For he loves England well enough for England to die.
And other fellows in that line had come too on the fly,
Their joys and toys,?Brave English boys,?For good and all put by;
O you brave best,?Teach all the rest?How pure the heart and high?When one loves England well enough for England to die.
One threw his cricket-bat aside, one left the ink to dry;
All peace and play?He's put away,?And bid his love good-bye--
O mother mine!?O sweetheart mine!?No man of yours am I--?If I love not England well enough for England to die.
I guess it strikes a chill somewhere, the bravest won't deny,
All that you love,?Away to shove,?And set your teeth to die;
But better dead,?When all is said,?Than lapped in peace to lie--?If we love not England well enough for England to die.
THE CRY OF THE LITTLE PEOPLES
The Cry of the Little Peoples went up to God in vain;?The Czech and the Pole, and the Finn, and the Schleswig Dane:
We ask but a little portion of the green, ambitious earth; Only to sow and sing and reap in the land of our birth.
We ask not coaling stations, nor ports in the China seas, We leave to the big child-nations such rivalries as these.
We have learned the lesson of Time, and we know three things of worth; Only to sow and sing and reap in the land of our birth.
O leave us little margins, waste ends of land and sea,?A little grass, and a hill or two, and a shadowing tree;
O leave us our little rivers that sweetly catch the sky,?To drive our mills, and to carry our wood, and to ripple by.
Once long ago, as you, with hollow pursuit of fame,?We filled all the shaking world with the sound of our name,
But now are we glad to rest, our battles and boasting done, Glad just to sow and sing and reap in our share of the sun.
Of this O will ye rob us,--with a foolish mighty hand,?Add with such cruel sorrow, so small a land to your land?
So might a boy rejoice him to conquer a hive of bees,?Overcome ants in battle,--we are scarcely more mighty than these--
So might a cruel heart hear a nightingale singing alone,?And say,