Turn Thou our blows of bitter death
To Thine appointed end;
Open our eyes to see beneath
Each honest foe a friend....
Father and Lord of friend and foe,
All-seeing and all-wise,
Thy balm to dying hearts bestow,
Thy sight to sightless eyes;
To the dear dead give life, where pain
And death no more dismay,
Where, amid Love's long terrorless reign,
All tears are wiped away.
Donald Johnson had written verse before he became a soldier, but Jeffery Day was one of the many poets who were cradled into poetry by the war. Born at St. Ives in 1896, educated at Sandroyd House and at Repton, he was only eighteen when he obtained a commission as a sub-lieutenant in the R.N.A.S. He showed exceptional skill as a pilot, and, says the Memoir in his Poems and Rhymes, he 'was chosen for work at sea that needed high technical accomplishment.' But, keen to take a hand in the desperate struggle on the Western front, he was not satisfied till he had managed to get transferred to a
