pocket sketch-book and over half a dozen of his twenty-six poems. He put his love of home into the lines addressed to 'J. C. F.' less than two months before he fought his last fight:
Sweet are the plains of France where the Lent lilies blow,
Yet sweeter far the woods and fields I know.
Fair is the land where the lark sings at dawn,
Yet fairer far the land where I was born.
No nightingale can sing a lovelier lay
Than that the sparrows chirp in my roof tree,
French suns can never paint a brighter day
Than that my fog-bound coasts can offer me.
But it is a sense of the tragedy and waste of it all that moves him in the rest of his war verse, as in the unfinished 'Carol for Christmas, 1914';
On a dark midnight such as this
Nearly two thousand years ago,
Three kings looked out towards the East
Where a single star shone low....
Be with them, Lord, in camp and field
Who guard our ancient name to-night.
Hark to the cry that rises now,
Lord, Lord, maintain us in our right.
