Page:For remembrance, soldier poets who have fallen in the war, Adcock, 1920.djvu/277

Rh a will to victory for the sake of peace and right and with a settled courage that nothing could shake. They descended into the pit and fought with beasts, but remained unconquerably human. Noel Hodgson, coming out of the desperate fighting at Loos, wrote on his way back to the rest camp:

And Dennys, when his death was imminent, sent up from amidst the carnage and desolation a vastly different message than that which Achilles shouted over his trenches:

But now I know that nought is purposeless,

And, even in destruction, we can find

A power whose steady motive is to bless

The ultimate redemption of mankind....

Ours is the privilege of sacrifice,

And cheerfully we heap the sacred pyre,

Our willing selves the offering—the price

Demanded to make fierce the cleansing fire.