Page:Poetry, a magazine of verse, Volume 7 (October 1915-March 1916).djvu/186

POETRY: A Magazine of Verse must love one another" writes a modern observer of mundane excesses; "there will be war until they do." From the first the poets have emphasized this ideal, beginning with that great poet who said, "Love your enemies"; and through all the wars of racial jealousy, political intrigue, or religious perversion, which have stained this planet for nineteen hundred years, we hear men singing of the Prince of Peace, and paradoxically flaunting the ideal of universal love. English poets have sounded this note from their earliest carols until now. Over four hundred years ago the anonymous author of God rest you merry, gentlemen, ended his Christmas song with this stanza:

"Peace on earth!" is the refrain of most Christmas hymns even to this day, and the idea so pervades the festival that soldiers in the trenches, we are told, make an informal truce in honor of it, and return to normally friendly intercourse across the dead line of war.

When will the word of ultimate authority be obeyed? When will men and nations accept as a working principle of life the command that they love one another? When will time "run back and fetch the age of gold?"

We began with the heroic Milton—let us end with this Christmas sonnet by a living poet, Robert Bridges, the Lau-