In the Day of Battle Poems of the Great War

N HOLMAN HUMBLY DEDICATED TO THE MEN FROM THE NORTH, SOUTH, EAST AND WEST WHO HAVE HASTENED TO RAISE THE TRUMPET FROM THE DUST, AND TO THE BRAVE WOMEN WHO HAVE MADE THE SUPREME SACRIFICE IN THE TIME OF THE EMPIRES URGENT NEED. NOTE TO THIRD EDITION Repeatedly during the last year, when our courage may have become faint and our vision dimmed, there has come to us from the Front, insistent as a bugle call, the voice of the Soldier Poet, proclaiming, not so much the glories of war as a realization of the high spiritual significance of his task and a conviction, virile and certain, that We who have seen men broken We know man is divine Through the fine resolve and clarity of vision we also some times hear the note of yearning for the familiar hill, seen in his wounded dreams of home In this third edition of In the Day of Battle for which the compiler bespeaks the same generous reception as was accorded the preceding editions, the reader will find a few additional poems in which those notes of high courage and pathos appear dominant, sometimes in separate poems, but often blended in one. In many cases permission to use these poems has been kindly granted by the near relatives of men who have fallen in the fight The uniform courtesy of both authors and publishers has made available many new poems for the book, including some of the finest sea songs in our own or any other lan guage. Many of these poems envisage for us the spirit and meaning of these tragic times most of them are instinct . with the emotion and fervour which only great national crises can evoke. The work of collecting these war poems, though arduous, will have brought its full reward if they only bring a ray of solace and comfort to hearts sorely stricken by this tragedy of a world at strife. CARRIE ELLEN HOLMAN Prince Edward Island, June, 1918 FOREWORD AMONG the books inspired by the war, few need less apology than those of which this little volume is representative, compilations of the more or less fugi tive verse appearing in journals, celebrating various stages of the struggle, and. then perhaps-carried off. into oblivion by some wind of great events. A compilation captures the winged words and treasures them. It deserves to have an honoured place in the long array of more formidable volumes, for it is undeniable that among the minor results of the Great War is a vast output of war literature. Volumes of history, theory and prophecy weigh down our shelves, pamphlets cover our tables thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks in Vallombrosa. Among these latter is one on Poetry and War by the Professor of Poetry at Oxford, Sir Herbert Warren, and at the head of his paper we find the suggestive old lines of Samuel Daniel What good is like to this To do worthy the writing 1 , and to write Worthy the reading and the worlds delight It is a good motto and sets us thinking, of one aspect of this extraordinary epoch of which the end is not yet, namely the relation of its literature to its action. Of deeds worthy the writing we have no lack, of writing to match those deeds we have quantity indeed, but how much of it will long - be held worthy the reading and the worlds delight The question must remain as yet unsettled. Here, as in other sections of the huge historic field, there has been controversy. Most of the critics who have con sidered the poetry of the war have expressed some thing less than enthusiasm... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.