Page:Poems Elliott.djvu/70

 the suffering of the wounded, is brought home to us in vivid verse. We see the soldiers, marching kneedeep in "the mud, the rain and the cold", with no hope of cheerful campfire awaiting them at the end of the day.

The gruesome horror of the word-picture "On the Wire" haunts us; the picture of a wounded soldier, entangled in the barbed wire in "No Man's Land," between the trenches, where it is impossible to reach the wounded. There he suffers and thirsts under the burning sun, and the drenching dews, until he finds welcome release in death.

In contrast to the two last mentioned poems, what could be more tender, more sweet, more pathetic, than his picture of "Fleurette," who did not hesitate to be- stow the comfort of her kiss upon the soldier, shattered by a bomb he had smothered in the trenches, to save his men.

Ranking with this, in the same quality of pathos, is that wonderful picture of his, which he has called "Grand Pere," the name given to their beloved General Joffre, by his soldiers. This must, like all, in fact, be read to be appreciated, for the greatest prose ever written would seem feeble and ineffectual beside his strong and pregnant verse.

In the last poem to which I wish to call especial atptention, his appeal to our faith, even in the midst of all this horror of bloodshed, is sweet and simple as a child's and hope is born to us in the reading of the lines: