Beneath them throbs an urgent well,
     That here is play, and there is war. 
     I know not which had most to tell
     Of whence we spring and what we are.

     Poem:  Hawarden

     When comes the lighted day for men to read
     Life’s meaning, with the work before their hands
     Till this good gift of breath from debt is freed,
     Earth will not hear her children’s wailful bands
     Deplore the chieftain fall’n in sob and dirge;
     Nor they look where is darkness, but on high. 
     The sun that dropped down our horizon’s verge,
     Illumes his labours through the travelled sky,
     Now seen in sum, most glorious; and ’tis known
     By what our warrior wrought we hold him fast. 
     A splendid image built of man has flown;
     His deeds inspired of God outstep a Past. 
     Ours the great privilege to have had one
     Among us who celestial tasks has done.

     Poem:  At The Close

     To Thee, dear God of Mercy, both appeal,
     Who straightway sound the call to arms.  Thou know’st;
     And that black spot in each embattled host,
     Spring of the blood-stream, later wilt reveal. 
     Now is it red artillery and white steel;
     Till on a day will ring the victor’s boast,
     That ’tis Thy chosen towers uppermost,
     Where Thy rejected grovels under heel. 
     So in all times of man’s descent insane
     To brute, did strength and craft combining strike,
     Even as a God of Armies, his fell blow. 
     But at the close he entered Thy domain,
     Dear God of Mercy, and if lion-like
     He tore the fall’n, the Eternal was his Foe.

     Poem:  Forest History

     I.

     Beneath the vans of doom did men pass in. 
     Heroic who came out; for round them hung
     A wavering phantom’s red volcano tongue,
     With league-long lizard tail and fishy fin: 

     II.

     Old Earth’s original Dragon; there retired
     To his last fastness; overthrown by few. 
     Him a laborious thrust of roadway slew. 
     Then man to play devorant straight was fired.

     III.

     More intimate became the forest fear
     While pillared darkness hatched malicious life
     At either elbow, wolf or gnome or knife
     And wary slid the glance from ear to ear.

     IV.

     In chillness, like a clouded lantern-ray,
     The forest’s heart of fog on mossed morass,
     On purple pool and silky cotton-grass,
     Revealed where lured the swallower byway.

     V.

     Dead outlook, flattened back with hard rebound
     Off walls of distance, left each mounted height. 
     It seemed a giant hag-fiend, churning spite
     Of humble human being, held the ground.

     VI.