# More songs by the fighting men. Soldiers poets: second series/Frank C. Lewis

FRANK C. LEWIS
Flight Sub-Lieut., R.N.A.S.
Belgium, 1914
I
THE lithe flames flicker through the veil of night, Licking with bitter tongue; and soon the dawn Will come, and gaunt and black against the white Cool sky will loom a smoking home, forlorn Of all the joy and peace that once was there. The pleading, pitiful dead lie mute and cold And all untended still. The fields are bare Of the young green, the parent of the gold.
O little land, great-hearted, who didst give Thine all for sake of others' liberty, ​Knowing the cost, nor shrinking at the thought, Be sure that thy immortal name shall live Writ large in thine own ashes. Men shall cry, "This was a nation marvellously wrought!"
II
There came a voice from out the darkness crying— A pleading voice, the voice of one in thrall— "Come, ye who pass—oh, heed ye not my sighing? Come and deliver! Hear, oh hear my call! For when the invader stood before my gate Demanding passage through with haughty tone, A voice cried loud, 'Wilt thou endure this fate? Better have death than live when honour's flown!' And so my children now lie slain by him I had not wronged; with strife my land is riven; Dishonoured here I lie with fettered limb. To desecration all my shrines are given, And nought remains but bondage drear and grim. . . . God! Is there any justice under heaven?"
Ad Profunda
WE have built high walls of pomp and pride And wealth, around our inmost Being, And deep, unseen, within there hide Visions too bright for our dull seeing.
We yearning stand, and cannot pass To where the Soul with these is One; Our utterance is as the grass Withering beneath the noonday sun.
The Waters of Infinity Break on the spirit's lonely shore: Lo! the wall crumbles, and we see All we have hoped and striven for.
O, then all time is lost in Time, The Soul has burst its prison-bars: We walk with feet still deep in slime, But with our heads above the stars.
The Downs, looking from Savernake Forest
WITH eager steps I climbed the hill Ploughed with deep, age-old furrows, till I reached the forest's edge and gazed Across the low red town smoke-hazed, Upon the downs, windy and bare, Ridge upon ridge unending. There No sound is heard save only these, The wind's wild song 'mid lonely trees, The echo of sheep-bells, and the cry Of peewits circling in the sky. Back in the dawn of time on earth, Before she brought her sons to birth, You stood the same as now you stand— Untroubled, vast, majestic, grand: Only you had not heard the tramp, Old Hackpen Hill and Barbury Camp, Of many an army passing by Under a blue and cloud-flecked sky. And happy they who fell in fight Upon your clear and wind-swept height: With thunder for their requiem And the dark clouds to weep for them, ​They dream the centuries away Through changeless night and changeless day.
O Downs, I think it good that you Have given your secret to the few Who love you and can understand. You are not as this other land Trodden by all who chance to pass: Only we tread your close-cropped grass Who love to feel the beat of rain Washing away all town-born pain: Wind: and the heights whence one may see The littleness of man: and we There feel at last that we are free.