Page:Poems of the Great War - Cunliffe.djvu/226

 200 O. M.

And when I strove to mend his style.

Blue-penciling his exercises, I little guessed that all the while

His soul was ripe for high emprises.

Two years ago ! and here I am.

Rejected as unfit ; still trying (As Verrall taught me on the Cam)

To make Greek Plays electrifying. And he who, till he was eighteen,

Found life one long excuse for laughing. For eighteen solid months has been

Continuously "strafed" or "strafing."

He writes me letters from the front

Which prove, although he doesn't know it. That though his words are plain and blunt,

He has the vision of a poet ; And lately, on his eight days' rest,

After long months of hard campaigning, He came, and lo ! an angel guest

I was aware of entertaining.

About himself he seldom spoke, But often of his widowed mother.

And how she nobly bore the stroke That robbed them of his sailor brother.

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