battle. He was supremely satisfied because he felt that in the years of peace our souls had put on too much flesh; we had become gross and sordid, had forgotten our ideals, and now the war had suddenly uplifted us from the slough, restored our manhood to us and touched us to noble issues:
Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour
And caught our youth and wakened us from sleeping,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary.
Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move,
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,
And all the little emptiness of love....
And again there is this rush of joyance in his rapturous requiem:
Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!
There 's none of these so lonely and poor of old
But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold....
Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth,
Holiness, lacked so long, and Love and Pain.
Honour has come back, as a king, to earth,
And paid his subjects with a royal wage;
And Nobleness walks in our ways again;
And we have come into our heritage.
