No More Learning

_Eden Phillpotts_




THE HEALERS


In a vision of the night I saw them,
In the battles of the night.
'Mid the roar and the reeling shadows of blood
They were moving like light,

Light of the reason, guarded
Tense within the will,
As a lantern under a tossing of boughs
Burns steady and still.

With scrutiny calm, and with fingers
Patient as swift
They bind up the hurts and the pain-writhen
Bodies uplift,

Untired and defenceless; around them
With shrieks in its breath
Bursts stark from the terrible horizon
Impersonal death;

But they take not their courage from anger
That blinds the hot being;
They take not their pity from weakness;
Tender, yet seeing;

Feeling, yet nerved to the uttermost;
Keen, like steel;
Yet the wounds of the mind they are stricken with,
Who shall heal?

They endure to have eyes of the watcher
In hell, and not swerve
For an hour from the faith that they follow,
The light that they serve.

Man true to man, to his kindness
That overflows all,
To his spirit erect in the thunder
When all his forts fall,--

This light, in the tiger-mad welter,
They serve and they save.
What song shall be worthy to sing of them--
Braver than the brave?

_Laurence Binyon_




THE RED CROSS NURSES


Out where the line of battle cleaves
The horizon of woe
And sightless warriors clutch the leaves
The Red Cross nurses go.
In where the cots of agony
Mark death's unmeasured tide--
Bear up the battle's harvestry--
The Red Cross nurses glide.

Look! Where the hell of steel has torn
Its way through slumbering earth
The orphaned urchins kneel forlorn
And wonder at their birth.
Until, above them, calm and wise
With smile and guiding hand,
God looking through their gentle eyes,
The Red Cross nurses stand.

_Thomas L. Masson_




KILMENY

(A SONG OF THE TRAWLERS)


Dark, dark lay the drifters, against the red west,
As they shot their long meshes of steel overside;
And the oily green waters were rocking to rest
When _Kilmeny_ went out, at the turn of the tide.
And nobody knew where that lassie would roam,
For the magic that called her was tapping unseen,
It was well nigh a week ere _Kilmeny_ came home,
And nobody knew where _Kilmeny_ had been.

She'd a gun at her bow that was Newcastle's best,
And a gun at her stern that was fresh from the Clyde,
And a secret her skipper had never confessed,
Not even at dawn, to his newly wed bride;
And a wireless that whispered above like a gnome,
The laughter of London, the boasts of Berlin.
O, it may have been mermaids that lured her from home,
But nobody knew where _Kilmeny_ had been.

It was dark when _Kilmeny_ came home from her quest,
With her bridge dabbled red where her skipper had died;
But she moved like a bride with a rose at her breast;
And "Well done, Kilmeny! " the admiral cried.

Now at sixty-four fathom a conger may come,
And nose at the bones of a drowned submarine;
But late in the evening _Kilmeny_ came home,
And nobody knew where _Kilmeny_ had been.

There's a wandering shadow that stares at the foam,
Though they sing all the night to old England, their queen,
Late, late in the evening _Kilmeny_ came home,
And nobody knew where _Kilmeny_ had been.

_Alfred Noyes_




THE MINE-SWEEPERS


Dawn off the Foreland--the young flood making
Jumbled and short and steep--
Black in the hollows and bright where it's breaking--
Awkward water to sweep.
"Mines reported in the fairway,
Warn all traffic and detain.
Sent up _Unity_, _Claribel_, _Assyrian_, _Stormcock_, and _Golden
Gain_. "

Noon off the Foreland--the first ebb making
Lumpy and strong in the bight.
Boom after boom, and the golf-hut shaking
And the jackdaws wild with fright.
"Mines located in the fairway,
Boats now working up the chain,
Sweepers--_Unity_, _Claribel_, _Assyrian_, _Stormcock_, and _Golden
Gain_. "

Dusk off the Foreland--the last light going
And the traffic crowding through,
And five damned trawlers with their syreens blowing
Heading the whole review!
"Sweep completed in the fairway.
No more mines remain.
Sent back _Unity_, _Claribel_, _Assyrian_, _Stormcock_, and _Golden
Gain_. "

Rudyard Kipling_




MARE LIBERUM


You dare to say with perjured lips,
"We fight to make the ocean free"?