past our deserving,
Discovered everywhere,
Who load us lucky fellows
With things to eat and wear,
Your kindness knows no limit – you seem sincerely vexed
That ever you need ask us – ‘What can we send you next?’
For packages of pastry,
For cigarettes and sweets,
For cakes and scones and butter,
For savoury bakemeats,
For garments that you knit us – we thank you thousandfold,
And if you ask, ‘What else, now?’ – why shouldn’t you be told?
When from parade returning,
We put our rifles by,
There’s spring in every footstep,
And hope in every eye;
We hurry to our billets – yet, hungry and athirst,
We don’t stampede for dinner – we look for letters first.
You’d laugh, or sigh, to notice
The pleasure fellows show
To read their war addresses
In writing that they know –
Oh, if you wish us kindly, who fight – or hope to fight –
Don’t wonder what to send us; we want you just to write .
W. Kersley Holmes
A Letter from Home
We sit in our tent and we’re feeling forlorn,
It’s raining outside and we’re sorry we’re born,
All the ‘rookies’ are sad and the trained men are quiet,
There’s not a man there who is game for a riot.
But hark! down the lines a rough voice is calling,
’Tis the Orderly Corporal standing there bawling,
And the words that he shouts amoving have set us,
‘Come out of your tents and fall in for your letters’.
There’s one for Bill Stewart from his darling Polly,
And off to his tent he goes looking jolly.
And so it goes on till they’re all given away,
Tho’ there’s many a chap who’s forgotten to-day.
Then back they all go and you can’t hear a sound
As they read them while sitting on the rough ground.
And those who have got none look on with sad eyes,
And envy the chaps who have captured a prize.
So while we do our bit to keep home fires burning,
Don’t forget it’s your letters for which we are yearning,
In billet or camp, and wherever we roam,
There’s nothing we prize like ‘a letter from home’.
Will Leslie
Letters Home
(This is Vers Libre, this is!)
Come, let me write to Melisande,
To Melisande whose moth-feet are even now
Passing, brogue-clad,
Over the valerian-coloured meadows . . .
The Postman will take the letter (with luck)
Up the street,
Up the little zig-zag village street,
Past old Ben’s, the Butchers,
Who owes me two-and-fourpence;
And past the ‘Yellow Unicorn’
Where Melisande is very probably
Getting off with that annoying fellow Bert.
P’raps I will write to Mother instead.
Hampden Gordon
The Dilemma
Verses on the Divers Charms of Two Young Wenches.
Erstwhile, in pedagogic garb,
I felt the urgings of the Muse,
But now I feel Love’s stinging barb,
And, loving, know not where to choose.
For Julia’s charms my heart entwine,
Alas! I own her kisses sweet –
Yet while I strive to make her mine,
Long for the arms of Marguerite.
Her unforgettable embrace
Makes throb my heart, my pulses beat,
Yet while I gaze on her fair face
I fly, in winged fancy fleet,
To where my Julia stands aglow
For me, her amorous dolt, to fly
From fettering wires and indents slow,
To lay me fettered to her eye.
Humble their birth, yet great their grace,
What though they thump the yeasty flour
When Julia lifts to me her face,
What man but envies me my hour?
And when, a-strolling at my ease,
I look to pass the time away,
At Marguerite a-shelling peas,
What dog but envies me my day?
Ah! pity me, poor luckless wight,
Thus envious envied, much bemused,
Yet, should I strive to set wrong right,
Who knows I were by one refused?
So deeply pledged to Marguerite,
So basely bound to Julia’s nod,
My only hope’s a shell to meet,
And hide my shame beneath the sod.
A Literary War Worker
(The favourite reading at the Front is, we are informed, the novelette of the more sentimental kind.)
In these days of stress and tumult, when the frightfulness of war
Readjusts the private notions
Discovered everywhere,
Who load us lucky fellows
With things to eat and wear,
Your kindness knows no limit – you seem sincerely vexed
That ever you need ask us – ‘What can we send you next?’
For packages of pastry,
For cigarettes and sweets,
For cakes and scones and butter,
For savoury bakemeats,
For garments that you knit us – we thank you thousandfold,
And if you ask, ‘What else, now?’ – why shouldn’t you be told?
When from parade returning,
We put our rifles by,
There’s spring in every footstep,
And hope in every eye;
We hurry to our billets – yet, hungry and athirst,
We don’t stampede for dinner – we look for letters first.
You’d laugh, or sigh, to notice
The pleasure fellows show
To read their war addresses
In writing that they know –
Oh, if you wish us kindly, who fight – or hope to fight –
Don’t wonder what to send us; we want you just to write .
W. Kersley Holmes
A Letter from Home
We sit in our tent and we’re feeling forlorn,
It’s raining outside and we’re sorry we’re born,
All the ‘rookies’ are sad and the trained men are quiet,
There’s not a man there who is game for a riot.
But hark! down the lines a rough voice is calling,
’Tis the Orderly Corporal standing there bawling,
And the words that he shouts amoving have set us,
‘Come out of your tents and fall in for your letters’.
There’s one for Bill Stewart from his darling Polly,
And off to his tent he goes looking jolly.
And so it goes on till they’re all given away,
Tho’ there’s many a chap who’s forgotten to-day.
Then back they all go and you can’t hear a sound
As they read them while sitting on the rough ground.
And those who have got none look on with sad eyes,
And envy the chaps who have captured a prize.
So while we do our bit to keep home fires burning,
Don’t forget it’s your letters for which we are yearning,
In billet or camp, and wherever we roam,
There’s nothing we prize like ‘a letter from home’.
Will Leslie
Letters Home
(This is Vers Libre, this is!)
Come, let me write to Melisande,
To Melisande whose moth-feet are even now
Passing, brogue-clad,
Over the valerian-coloured meadows . . .
The Postman will take the letter (with luck)
Up the street,
Up the little zig-zag village street,
Past old Ben’s, the Butchers,
Who owes me two-and-fourpence;
And past the ‘Yellow Unicorn’
Where Melisande is very probably
Getting off with that annoying fellow Bert.
P’raps I will write to Mother instead.
Hampden Gordon
The Dilemma
Verses on the Divers Charms of Two Young Wenches.
Erstwhile, in pedagogic garb,
I felt the urgings of the Muse,
But now I feel Love’s stinging barb,
And, loving, know not where to choose.
For Julia’s charms my heart entwine,
Alas! I own her kisses sweet –
Yet while I strive to make her mine,
Long for the arms of Marguerite.
Her unforgettable embrace
Makes throb my heart, my pulses beat,
Yet while I gaze on her fair face
I fly, in winged fancy fleet,
To where my Julia stands aglow
For me, her amorous dolt, to fly
From fettering wires and indents slow,
To lay me fettered to her eye.
Humble their birth, yet great their grace,
What though they thump the yeasty flour
When Julia lifts to me her face,
What man but envies me my hour?
And when, a-strolling at my ease,
I look to pass the time away,
At Marguerite a-shelling peas,
What dog but envies me my day?
Ah! pity me, poor luckless wight,
Thus envious envied, much bemused,
Yet, should I strive to set wrong right,
Who knows I were by one refused?
So deeply pledged to Marguerite,
So basely bound to Julia’s nod,
My only hope’s a shell to meet,
And hide my shame beneath the sod.
A Literary War Worker
(The favourite reading at the Front is, we are informed, the novelette of the more sentimental kind.)
In these days of stress and tumult, when the frightfulness of war
Readjusts the private notions
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