Page:For remembrance, soldier poets who have fallen in the war, Adcock, 1920.djvu/244

196, but got himself transferred to the Royal Field Artillery. 'Three weeks after joining, he was offered a stripe on the condition that he joined the clerical staff, but this he declined, preferring to rough it with the ordinary Tommies.' Rough it he did out in France during the first year of the war, but, cheerful and a sturdy optimist, he ignored his hardships in his letters or made a jest of them. Most of his verse dates from his civilian days; of the four poems he wrote at the front, two are in a lighter vein, blithely anticipating peace, and commemorating the luck of his battery; one calls upon Red, the king of colours, to pay homage henceforth to Khaki; and the fourth, 'A Calm Night at the Front,' sketches the scene around him and the thoughts that it stirs in him:

...The rifle fire has died away,

All silent now: the moon on high

Would set a truce until the day,

God staying the hand of destiny....

O womenfolk of British lands,

Who toil and sweat in holiest cause,

Oh raise in prayer your clasped hands

That men may see the curse of wars