Page:For remembrance, soldier poets who have fallen in the war, Adcock, 1920.djvu/200

158 assistant adjutant work, went to France in June 1916. One of the poems written in those days, 'Candle Light,' gives a delightful sketch of his life in a French billet:

Candle light is so mellow and warm

When a man comes in all hungry and cold,

Clotted with mud or wet with the storm—

Only of candle light you shall be told.

Of Madame's brave, sad eagerness

And French serenity of dress,

Her quiet, quick ways as she goes

To dry our heavy, sodden clothes

And bring all hot the great ragoût

That makes once more a man of you,

Her pains to help us put away

The sights that we have seen all day,

Her talk of kine, and oats, and rye,

And François' feats when but so high—

You 'd never guess, did you not know,

He died for France three months ago.

And then there 's Marthe, whom he has left

(So proud, and yet so all bereft),

And Marie, with her hair in ties,

Looking at you with great round eyes

That make you wish to Heaven you were

The hero that you seem to her.

And last, and least,

There 's François' little Jean-Baptiste,