GREAT POEMS OF THE WORLD WAR

Edited, With Introduction, Notes and Original Matter, By W. D. EATON CHICAGO T. S. DENISON & COMPANY PUBLISHERS

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COPYRIGHT, 1918 By EBEN H. NORRIS under title “The War in Verse and Prose” Copyright, 1922, by T. S. Denison & Company

“Great Poems of the World War”

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PREFACE

N a fateful day in 1914, without a warning flash or tremor, there fell upon the world such a blast of war as human reason could not have foreglimpsed, nor Apocalyptic vision raised, to appall the souls of men. Twenty-seven nations took the shock and were rocked to their foundations. Eleven were caught and knotted in the maddest agony of conflict that ever was known. Through four years the winds of destruction swirled and roared around the monstrous welter, before the evil forces failed and their exhaustion brought a breathing space such as lies at the heart of a typhoon. Around the widening edges of that space they still muttered for a while in gusts of blood and fire, slowly receding, slowly dying. But the great storm is gone; the long night that seemed the night of doom is over.

Its epic has not been written. The time is too near us, the motive too deep, the theme too vast. But out of the dark came many voices, voices of lamentation, of home and love and hope and heroism and loftiest ideality, of romance, of strange comedy. These had their inspiration from a gigantic spectacle of elemental passions in cross-play, from the thoughts and emotions not of a single people, but of all that were fighting for the life and light of civilization. Poets great and poets minor followed{6} the war or fought in it, and expressed its spirit with a personal, passionate fidelity impossible to historians.

It would not be well were all these voices lost. Many are worth fixation where they may be heard again at will, and that is the reason for and purpose of this book. The finest and truest of them are given here.

In making selection, availability for recitation has been considered. There is no better way to stir the mind or fix the memory than by spoken words of beauty in rhythmic cadence, especially in schools. It is hoped they will be effective in such uses.

Readers will find in the captain notes many helpful sidelights upon topics and personalities. These will commend themselves for their own sake.

W. D. Eaton.

{7}The Press Club, Chicago.

BEFORE ACTION LIEUT. WILLIAM NOEL HODGSON

Military Cross, Devon Regiment—Killed in Battle

From “Verse and Prose in Peace and War.” John Murray, Publisher, London. Permission to reproduce in this book.

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ALAN SEEGER WASHINGTON VAN DUSEN

in The Chicago Tribune

THE NURSE in London Punch

Reproduced by special permission of the Proprietors of “Punch”

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THE LITTLE HOME PAPER CHARLES HANSON TOWNE

in The American Magazine

Permission to reproduce in this book

NO MAN’S LAND CAPT. JAMES H. KNIGHT-ADKIN

in The Spectator

THE GOLD STAR EDGAR A. GUEST

Copyright, 1918, by Edgar A. Guest. Special permission to reproduce in this book.

WATCHIN’ OUT FOR SUBS U. A. L.

From Bert Leston Taylor’s column, “A Line o’ Type or Two,” in The Chicago Tribune

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FRENCH IN THE TRENCHES WILLIAM J. ROBINSON

in The San Francisco Argonaut

Permission to reproduce in this book