BATTLE IN THE MUD* 087

The fighting man shall from the sun
Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth;
Speed with the light-foot winds to run,
• And with the trees to newer birth;
And find, when fighting shall be done.
Great rest, and fullness after dearth.

All the bright company of Heaven
Hold him in their high comradeship,
The Dog-Star and the Sisters Seven,
Orion's Belt and sworded hip.
*••*••

The blackbird sings to him,c Brother, brother,
If-this be the last song you shall sing,
Sing well, for you may not sing another:
Brother, sing'1s*
• • ••••••

The changing mood of England at war can be traced in the
work of its poets. Almost at once there was a division between
the professional poets at home and the combatant poets—
amateurs in verse as in soldiering and astonishingly great in
both. This division widened until in the end it became an un-
bridgeable gulf. It typified the greater gulf between the two
Englands—the young living England that died and the old
petrified England that lived. A quarter of a century later, when
a second world war broke out, that gulf was still iinbridged.

The early war poets were like the England that took up the
challenge of the German War Lords: passionate in their sacrifice,
confident, uncakulating. They never doubted their victory or
the rightness of their dedication. Theirs was an almost mystical
exaltation: the war had been sent as guerdon of their manhood,
to test them and by their testing to purify a world "grown old
and stale and weary." They positively rejoiced in their unlooked-
for, elected lot: it was for this, they felt, that they had been
born.

a Better far to pass away
While the limbs are strong and young,
Ere the ending of the day,
Ere youth's lusty song be sung.