SOME RECENT WAR VERSE

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2970, 6 January 1917, Page 11

SOME RECENT WAR VERSE

Patrick Macgill's "Soldier Songs."

Patrick Macgill, the now famous 1 "Navvy Poet," tho author . of that powerful story "Children of tho Dead; End," and since even better known by; his war-books, "The Great Push" and"The Red Horizon," has now a book of "Soldier Songs" (London;; Herbert Jenkins, Ltd.). A week or two ago I gave an extract (taken from anEnglish' newspaper) from one of the poems entitled "The Ole Sweats." In' his preface to tho volume now beforeme, Mr. Macgill states that prido of regiment in. trie "old sweats" ("men who had fought well on many a bloody' field, and added by prowess of arms numerous honours to their - own beloved regiment") is much stronger than love of country. On the evening of the; arrival of a draft of the "Old Die-; hards,"- added to the London Irish, of which the author himself- was a member, these veterans, he says, sat in' their huts and sang the song of the "Old Diehards." "Mere doggerel the' verse, tho words fatuous, and the singing not above reproach. But the song touched the hearts of the audienco; the listeners were 'old swea-ts' who had songs of their own." Tommy, says Mr. Macgill, is a singing soldier. ■He sings on the march,-in - the • dugouts, in tho trenches, as in the cosy French restaurants and cafes at the rear. He even, sings, says'the author, to the village patroime when ordering food, and his song is in French:

Yonlea voUs dbnnez .jhoi, Si'l vous plait, : Pain et beurre, \ Et cafe au-lait. And serenades the Gallic maiden at the village pump:

Apres- la/guene firiie,'.' Soldat Anglais partoe, ll'selle Fiongsay boko pleury, Apres laignerre finie.

Many of Mr. Macgill's own soldier sonjjs are' of a much higher standard of literary merit than is much of this class of verse which the present war has produced. The soldier's mostalgia, the dream of or the longing for. the environment of earlier and happier days, is gracefully sot forth in the lines entitled "It's a far, far cry":

It's a far, far cry to my own land, A hundred leagues or more; ' To moorlands whore the fairies flit In Rosses and Gweeaore,

Where White-maned waves come prancing up To Dooran's rugged shore.

There's a cabin' there by a holy well, Once blessed by Columbeille, And a holly bush and a fairy fort On the slope of Glenties Hill, Where the dancing feet of many winds Go roving at their will.

My heart is siok of the level lands, where the wingless windmills be, . Whore the long-nosed guns from dusk to dawn • . Are speaking angrily; , But the little home on (Jlenties • Hill, Ah! that's the place for me. A candlestick. on the muddy floor Lights up the dugout And I see in its flame the prancing s?a And the mountains straight and tall; For my heart is more than often back By. the hills of Donegal. 3 .

There is :i huniour' in some of "the verses, but others'are-grimly "horrorladen, for as a,born realist Mr. Macgill paints war as it is, a tragic, a dreadful fact. In other poems, yet again, there is rWiocted the author's love for and sympathy with Nature. The very colour and atmosphere of the background is there,-as in such lines as. these: —

The winds come soft of an evening o'er the fields of golden grain; The good sharp 6cythes will cut the corn

tre we come back again; Tho village girls will tend the grain and mill the autumn yield. While we go forth to other work upon another field. Or,.again, in a song of marching, marching alosg La Bassee Road:

Lonely and still the village lies, The houses sleep, all blinds are drawn, The road is straight' as the bullet flies,

And we go marching into the dawn. Salmon-pink is the furnace sheen, •■ Where the coal stacks bulk in the ghostly air, . . The long platoons on the move are •' seen, Little connecting files, between, Moving and moving, _ anywhere;

My final extract from ..a volume whose every page tempts quotation shall be the- first and 'final-verses-of the beautiful, poem - entitled "The" Soldier's Prayer": ,' Givenchy village lies a wreck, Givenchy Church is bare, ,' , No more the-peasant maidens come to

say their vespers there,' The altar rails are wrenched apart, with rubble Uttered o'er, The sacred broken sanctuary lamp lies smashed upon the floor; And mute upon the crucifix He looks upon it allTie great white Christ, tho shrapnelscourged, upon tho eastern wall.

And when at night on sentry-go, with danger keeping tryst, I see upon the'crucifix the blood-stained form of Christ Defied and maimed, tho merciful on vigil aTI the time;. Pitying His children's wrath, their passion and their crime. Mute, mute, He haug3 upon His Cross, the symbol of His pain, And as men scourged Him long ago, they 6conrge Him once again— There in the lonely war-lit night to 'Christ the Lord /1 call, "Forgive tho ones who work Thee harm, 0 Lord, forgive us all." I warmly commend 'Mr. Macgill's hook to tho attention of my readers. (N.Z. price, 4s. <5d.)

The Making of Micky M'Chee. Those who have read Mr. B. W. Campbell's striking and amusing war sketches as sot forth in "Private Spud Tamson" and "The Kangaroo Marines," will givo a hearty welcome to this popular writer's latest volume, "The Making of Micky M'Gheo, and Other Stories in Verse" (Georgo Allen and Unwin, Ltd.). Mr. Campbell makes no claim to bo a "master of tho greatest art." His stories in verso are merely, ho tells us, "soldier rhymes." This modest disclaimer notwithstanding, tho verses are well worth reading. Simple in form, homoly in wording, they convey a singularly dramatic view of the light and shade of tho soldier's life. At the front, comedy and tragedy—t)ie latter, alas, predominant —are continually jostling, and Mr. Campbell often gives us, in a few simple verses, a poignantly vivid picture of tho struggle as it proceeds day by day at the front. Many of the verses deal with- trie exploits of tho Scottish regiments, which have won snob undying fame during tho war. The title poem recounts the story of one Micky M'Ghee, a product of tho Glasgow slums, who had enlisted for ale, for sleep, and for broad.

Micky is a hard case, and his noncoms, wore for giving him up as a hopeless wastrel! an incubus upon, rather than an honour to, the regiment. But his captain Son a$ a Dote and a "White Man," and known to his pien as "Bob,"

had a soft cornel - in his heart for the scamp, andj speaking to him firmly but kindly, won kiin over to

playing the game like a sportsman.

And poor Micky did "make good," dying a hero's death during the retreat from Mons, after lighting desperately with his Highlander comrades, and saving his much-beloved captain's life.

There's a woman who lives in "Models," known as Snrah to all— A broken soul of the scourings that en-

vironment throws to 'the wall. Yet she, like Hie Fairies of Joyland, has ■ lier dreams.of the past as well; 'Tis tho dream of the man called Micky —Micky, the' man who fell, And her pride is a silver medal, a letter

and statement of pay From the man w'ho cherished her dearly,

and saved on a "bob" a day, Ten pounds to this woman called Sarah—

crude, yet kind as a dove, Whose charity in the mean streets gained her a soldier's love.

Mr. Campbell sings the praises of "The Men of the Border Breed," the "Lowland Fuzzies," "Tho Glesca Kilties," "The Camerons," and does not forget the "Kangaroo Marines":

Hearty and strong, sunburnt and longCornstalks from Sydney, Perth, and Gee-

long. , Bough and ready boys—not fancy dandy

' toys. Men! Men! Men! Australia's soldier boys.

He pays, too, a handsome tribute to the. Navy, and is specially enthusiastic over the splendid, self-sacrificing work of the Royal Army Medical Corps: v Some call them the Linseed Lancers; others dub them the Poultice Crush! And they're bossed by men "On the 1 Panel," and nurses trained not to ! blush ' When chloroformed Mr. Atkins mumbles out ' Bli-mc" and "H " As they dig out the jagging dum-dum or lump of a German shell. But theirs is a job with no limelightno touch of the cinema game; They work till they drop the stretchers— never court D.'C.M. fame; Thev slog when the Tommy is fightingslog when he's resting in rear. If they don't carry rifles and bayonets, thev always bring succour and cheer.

When shells are screaming and bursting —dug-outs become slianibles and graves, When limbs and heads are a-flying, its the Bearer who quietly braves Wounds, death, murder, or capture, to bandago the moaning and maimed, And carry tho weary and dying to the Haven that Lister has famed.

Hats off to the men "On tlie Panel." Hats off to the Sisters so sweet, And salute every Stretcher-bearer who Koes marching down your street; If thev don't carry rifles and bayonets, and their march is the 'March, in Saul," • ..■• „ , They're IT in the wards of mercy, and IT where the mangled call. Mr. H. K. Elcock contributes, somo excellent pen arid ink sketches, which in subject and style are in admirable keeping with the spirit of the text. (N.Z. price, 4s. 6d.)