Poetry Books

Foreword I've tinkered at my bits of rhymesIn weary, woeful, waiting times;In doleful hours of battle-din,Ere yet they brought the wounded in;Through vigils of the fateful night,In lousy barns by candle-light;In dug-outs, sagging and aflood,On stretchers stiff and bleared with blood;By ragged grove, by ruined road,By hearths accurst where Love abode;By broken altars, blackened shrinesI've... more...

Strange Meeting It seemed that out of the battle I escapedDown some profound dull tunnel, long since scoopedThrough granites which Titanic wars had groined.Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and staredWith piteous recognition in fixed eyes,Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.And by his smile, I knew that... more...

AN UPBRAIDING Now I am dead you sing to me   The songs we used to know,But while I lived you had no wish   Or care for doing so. Now I am dead you come to me   In the moonlight, comfortless;Ah, what would I have given alive   To win such tenderness! When you are dead, and stand to me   Not differenced, as now,But like again, will you be cold   As when we lived, or how? "These... more...

Over Here Pledged to the bravest and the best,We stand, who cannot share the fray,Staunch for the danger and the test.For them at night we kneel and pray.Be with them, Lord, who serve the truth,And make us worthy of our youth! Here mother-love and father-loveUnite in love of country now;Here to the flag that flies above,Our heads we reverently bow;Here as one people, night and day,For victory we work... more...

The Land God Forgot The lonely sunsets flare forlornDown valleys dreadly desolate;The lordly mountains soar in scornAs still as death, as stern as fate. The lonely sunsets flame and die;The giant valleys gulp the night;The monster mountains scrape the sky,Where eager stars are diamond-bright. So gaunt against the gibbous moon,Piercing the silence velvet-piled,A lone wolf howls his ancient rune —The... more...

THE LAW OF THE YUKONThisis the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain:"Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane.Strong for the red rage of battle; sane, for I harry them sore;Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core;Swift as the panther in triumph, fierce as the bear in defeat,Sired of a bulldog parent, steeled in the furnace heat.Send me the... more...