The Silk-Hat Soldier And Other Poems in War Time   By: Richard Le Gallienne (1866-1947)

Robert Louis Stevenson: An Elegy, and Other Poems, Mainly Personal.

English Poems. Revised.

Rudyard Kipling: A Criticism.

George Meredith: Some Characteristics. With a bibliography (much enlarged) by John Lane.

The Quest of the Golden Girl: A Romance.

The Romance of Zion Chapel.

The Worshipper of the Image: A Tragic Fairy Tale.

Sleeping Beauty and Other Prose Fancies.

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: A Paraphrase from Several Literary Translations. New edition with fifty additional quatrains. With cover design by Will Bradley.

Retrospective Reviews: A Literary Log. (New edition.) 2 vols.

Prose Fancies. First series. With portrait of the author by Wilson Steer.

Prose Fancies. Second series.

Travels in England. New edition.

New Poems.

Attitudes and Avowals. With Some Retrospective Reviews.

The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems.

THE SILK HAT SOLDIER

AND OTHER POEMS IN WAR TIME

BY RICHARD LE GALLIENNE

NEW YORK JOHN LANE COMPANY LONDON JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD MCMXV

COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY JOHN LANE COMPANY

Press of J. J. Little & Ives Co. New York

To His Majesty

ALBERT I.

King of the Belgians

THE HEROIC CAPTAIN OF AN HEROIC PEOPLE

CONTENTS

PAGE

To Belgium 9

The Silk Hat Soldier 11

The Cry of the Little Peoples 15

The Illusion of War 20

Christmas in War time 22

"Soldier Going to the War" 29

The Rainbow 30

TO BELGIUM

Our tears, our songs, our laurels what are these To thee in thy Gethsemane of loss, Stretched in thine unimagined agonies On Hell's last engine of the Iron Cross.

For such a world as this that thou shouldst die Is price too vast yet, Belgium, hadst thou sold Thyself, O then had fled from out the earth Honour for ever, and left only Gold.

Nor diest thou for soon shalt thou awake, And, lifted high on our victorious shields, Watch the new sunrise driving for your sons The hated German shadow from your fields.

"British colonists resident in London volunteer, and not even silk hats are doffed before training begins"

New York Times

THE SILK HAT SOLDIER

I saw him in a picture, and I felt I'd like to cry He stood in line, The man "for mine," A tall silk hatted "guy" Right on the call, Silk hat and all, He'd hurried to the cry For he loves England well enough for England to die.

I've seen King Harry's helmet in the Abbey hanging high The one he wore At Agincourt; But braver to my eye That city toff Too keen to doff His stove pipe bless him why? For he loves England well enough for England to die.

And other fellows in that line had come too on the fly, Their joys and toys, Brave English boys, For good and all put by; O you brave best, Teach all the rest How pure the heart and high When one loves England well enough for England to die.

One threw his cricket bat aside, one left the ink to dry; All peace and play He's put away, And bid his love good bye O mother mine! O sweetheart mine! No man of yours am I If I love not England well enough for England to die.

I guess it strikes a chill somewhere, the bravest won't deny, All that you love, Away to shove, And set your teeth to die; But better dead, When all is said, Than lapped in peace to lie If we love not England well enough for England to die.

THE CRY OF THE LITTLE PEOPLES

The Cry of the Little Peoples went up to God in vain; The Czech and the Pole, and the Finn, and the Schleswig Dane: