Page:For remembrance, soldier poets who have fallen in the war, Adcock, 1920.djvu/115

Rh thousands in the years when we, in any case, shall be no more.'

Some of the best of Henry Lionel Field's poems, such as the charming lyric 'Ploughman, Dig the Coulter Deep,' were written in his Oxford days. He was the favourite grandson of Mr. Jesse Collings and traced his descent, on the distaff side, from Cromwell. From Marlborough he went to Oxford, and matriculated for Lincoln College, but instead of going there preferred to start at once on what he meant to be the real work of his life, and became a student at the Birmingham School of Art. In July 1914, he was taking holiday at a sketching school at Coniston, when the sudden outbreak of war brought him hurrying home to enlist. He was persuaded to wait for a commission, and in due course was gazetted to the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, and in February 1916 was sent to France with his men. For five months he was in the trenches, and wrote home saying he was enjoying himself. 'I am much happier than I ever thought I should be in the Army.