They left the peaceful river, The cricket field, the quad, The shaven lawns of Oxford To seek a bloody sod-- They gave their merry youth away For country and for God.
God rest you, happy gentlemen, Who laid your good lives down, Who took the khaki and the gun Instead of cap and gown. God bring you to a fairer place Than even Oxford town.
The sunny streets of Oxford Are lying still and bare. No sound of voice or laughter Rings through the golden air; And, chiming from her belfry, No longer Christchurch calls The eager, boyish faces To gather in her halls.
The colleges are empty. Only the sun and wind Make merry in the places The lads have left behind. But, when the trooping shadows Have put the day to flight, The Gentlemen of Oxford Come homing through the night.
From France they come, and Flanders, From Mons, and Marne and Aisne. From Greece and from Gallipoli They come to her again; From the North Sea’s grey waters, From many a grave unknown, The Gentlemen of Oxford Come back to claim their own.
The dark is full of laughter, Boy laughter, glad and young. They tell the old-time stories, The old-time songs are sung; They linger in her cloisters, They throng her dewy meads, Till Isis hears their calling And laughs among her reeds.
But, when the east is whitening To greet the rising sun, And slowly, over Carfax, The stars fade, one by one, Then, when the dawn-wind whispers Along the Isis shore, The Gentlemen of Oxford Must seek their graves once more.
One star for all she had, And in her heart One wound--yet is she glad For all its smart As they are glad who bear The pangs of birth That a new soul and fair May come to earth, Seeing she, too, was one Who from Death’s strife Granted her first-born son Proudly to Life. Now with that very faith Life justified, She grants a son to Death With the same pride.
IN THE SCOOP, THE CHICAGO PRESS CLUB’S MAGAZINE
Still breaks the Holy morn, to soothe the care And labor of the world; hushed is the grove, And overhead the vireo’s note of love Floats like a joyful utterance of prayer. Soft insect murmurs fill the enchanted air. Into a fairer day earth seems to move, And statelier thoughts lift mortal sense above Life’s sin and pain; the sorrow and despair. But hark! where now the noonday beams are shed In sorrowing Europe, trembles a sound Of thunder, and the land with dews of blood Is drenched; while o’er the dying and the dead Fate turns to weep o’er every pleading wound-- Can earth o’ercome the evil with the good?