BY KATHERINE HALE
Author of "Grey Knitting"
Cover Design by
DOROTHY STEVENS
MCCLELLAND, GOODCHILD & STEWART
PUBLISHERS : : : : TORONTO
COPYRIGHT CANADA, 1916
MCCLELLAND, GOODCHILD & STEWART, LIMITED
TORONTO
PRINTED IN CANADA
Contents
The White Comrade
The Awakening
The Hearts of Mothers
Soul of the Earth
I used to Wear a Gown of Green
The Departure
A Canadian soldier, wounded at Ypres, speaks
So this green land is England! Her we saw
Radiant and smiling in our early dreams,
A land by love dream-haunted. Now we come
With stranger vision than our youth could give
To the great shelter of her mighty arms.
We come from battles bitter and long fought
To see the stars shining on village streets
And watch a country in midsummer calm—
A soft land, lying August-clad but chill,
Dull to Canadian eyes that know the sun
As it stalks red across an azure sky.
And as we limp about and smoke, play cards,
And wait impatient to be off again,
Sometimes we two, amid the comrades here,—
Two only of the three who started out,
For, in the wood at Julien, Edward fell—
Sometimes we two go silent, then look up
To see if we can find in others' eyes
A knowledge that has grown with us from out
The fields of France, when in those awful nights,
Some of us heard a rumor, saw a Form.
* * * * *
Then we look back unto that strange new hour
When time was suddenly transformed for us
Within a sleepy town near old Quebec.
We, sunburned, and already turning home
From a long forest tramp of two good weeks,
We who were friends together, town and school
And lives in common, knitting us akin.
We had been tramping through the distant hills
Far out of reach of papers and of news
And when we stopped for letters, it was there
We met the first surprising note of war:
A little bill-board like a clarion voice
Shouted to us on that midsummer day,
"Germany says!" And on and on and on
The fateful message ran. We turned and stared
Into each other's eyes in blank amaze.
"Germany says!" In two short weeks of time
Hidden by forests as we three had been
Could all the world be humbled so that news
Of Germany, and what she says or does
Or does not say or do, could raise the storm
Whose thunders shook us even from afar.
"Belgium is entered!" "England is prepared!"
"Canada mobilizing!" Oh, ye gods,
What things to read upon a little board
Tacked up above the place where letters lie!
Later, we asked for ours, and they were full
Of a new wonder and a great surprise.
My little sister wrote, "I never dreamed
That things could happen in this prosy town;
But everyone is stirring and awake.
Red Cross is starting, and each girl I know
Has sent f