Page:For remembrance, soldier poets who have fallen in the war, Adcock, 1920.djvu/199

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O once adored

Dear lady we have lost, return again,

Bring us not peace nor languors, but a sword,

Even as death, dealing thy needful pain;

Upbraid, accuse, destroy, but make our spirit whole,

Come as an indignation, a desire

All unawares discerned in every soul,

And on thy ready altars light the fire.

How was it possible for a man of such spiritual insight to hesitate when the war came with its instant appeal to all of honour and chivalry that had power with us? By then he had been four years married, and was happy in his work and in the home life with his wife and little son, but he could not rest so in his own happiness. He felt that his duty was elsewhere, and nothing could dissuade him from going where it led. The death of the head of his firm delayed him, but so soon as he could get his business affairs in order, in August 1915 he obtained a commission in the 5th North Staffordshire Regiment, and after some months of training and