Here lies a clerk who half his life had spent
    Toiling at ledgers in a city grey,
    Thinking that so his days would drift away
    With no lance broken in life’s tournament;
    Yet ever ’twixt the book and his bright eyes
    The gleaming eagles of the legions came,
    And horsemen, charging under phantom skies,
    Went thundering past beneath the oriflamme.

    And now those waiting dreams are satisfied,
    From twilight to the halls of dawn he went;
    His lance is broken—­but he lies content
    With that high hour, he wants no recompense,
    Who found his battle in the last resort,
    Nor needs he any hearse to bear him hence,
    Who goes to join the men at Agincourt.

He wrote this when he was in Flanders in the war: 

The fallen spire (A Flemish Village)

[Footnote:  Reprinted from The Volunteer and other Poems, by kind permission of Messrs. Sidgwick & Jackson.]

    That spire is gone that slept for centuries,
      Mirrored among the lilies, calm and low;
    And now the water holds but empty skies
      Through which the rivers of the thunder flow.

    The church lies broken near the fallen spire,
      For here, among these old and human things,
    Death sweeps along the street with feet of fire,
      And goes upon his way with moaning wings.

    On pavements by the kneeling herdsmen worn
      The drifting fleeces of the shells are rolled;
    Above the Saints a village Christ forlorn,
      Wounded again, looks down upon His fold.

    And silence follows fast:  no evening peace,
      But leaden stillness, when the thunder wanes,
    Haunting the slender branches of the trees,
      And settling low upon the listless plains.

“Beb,” as we called him, married Lady Cynthia Charteris, a lovely niece of Lady de Vesci and daughter of another beloved and interesting friend of mine, the present Countess of Wemyss.

Our third son, Arthur Asquith, was one of the great soldiers of the war.  He married Betty, the daughter of my greatest friend, Lady Manners, a woman who has never failed me in affection and loyalty.

Arthur Asquith joined the Royal Naval Division on its formation in September, 1914, and was attached at first to the “Anson,” and during the greater part of his service to the “Hood” Battalion.  In the early days of October, 1914, he took part in the operations at Antwerp and, after further training at home in the camp at Blandford, went in February, 1915, with his battalion to the Dardanelles, where they formed part of the Second Naval Brigade.  He was in all the fighting on the Gallipoli peninsula and was wounded, but returned to duty and was one of the last to embark on the final evacuation of Helles, in January, 1916.

In the following May the Naval Division joined the army in France, becoming the 63rd Division, and the “Hood” Battalion (now commanded by Commander Freyberg, V. C.) formed part of the 189th Brigade.