Shane Leslie, the only surviving son of Sir John Leslie, was born at Swan Park, Monaghan, Ireland, in 1886 and was educated at Eton and the University of Paris. He worked for a time among the Irish poor and was deeply interested in the Celtic revival. During the greater part of a year he lectured in the United States, marrying an American, Marjorie Ide.

Leslie has been editor of The Dublin Review since 1916. He is the author of several volumes on Irish political matters as well as The End of a Chapter and Verses in Peace and War.

FLEET STREET

I never see the newsboys run
Amid the whirling street,
With swift untiring feet,
To cry the latest venture done,
But I expect one day to hear
Them cry the crack of doom
And risings from the tomb,
With great Archangel Michael near;
And see them running from the Fleet
As messengers of God,

With Heaven's tidings shod

About their brave unwearied feet.

THE PATER OF THE CANNON

Father of the thunder,

Flinger of the flame,

Searing stars asunder,

Hallowed be Thy Name!

By the sweet-sung quiring
Sister bullets hum,

By our fiercest firing,

May Thy Kingdom come!

By Thy strong apostle
Of the Maxim gun,
By his pentecostal

Flame, Thy Will be done!

Give us, Lord, good feeding

To Thy battles sped

Flesh, white grained and bleeding,
Give for daily bread!

Frances Cornford

The daughter of Francis Darwin, third son of Charles Darwin, Mrs. Frances Macdonald Cornford, whose husband is a Fellow and Lecturer of Trinity College, was born in 1886. She has published three volumes of unaffected lyrical verse, the most recent of which, Spring Morning, was brought out by The Poetry Bookshop in 1915.

PREEXISTENCE

I laid me down upon the shore
And dreamed a little space;

I heard the great waves break and roar;
The sun was on my face.

My idle hands and fingers brown
Played with the pebbles grey;

The waves came up, the waves went down,
Most thundering and gay.

The pebbles, they were smooth and round

And warm upon my hands,

Like little people I had found
Sitting among the sands.

The grains of sand so shining-small
Soft through my fingers ran;
The sun shone down upon it all,
And so my dream began:

How all of this had been before,
How ages far away

I lay on some forgotten shore

As here I lie to-day.

The waves came shining up the sands,
As here to-day they shine;

And in my pre-pelasgian hands
The sand was warm and fine.

I have forgotten whence I came,
Or what my home might be,
Or by what strange and savage name
I called that thundering sea.

I only know the sun shone down
As still it shines to-day,

And in my fingers long and brown
The little pebbles lay.

Anna Wickham

Anna Wickham, one of the most individual of the younger women-poets, has published two distinctive volumes, The Contemplative Quarry (1915) and The Man with a Hammer (1916).

THE SINGER

If I had peace to sit and sing,
Then I could make a lovely thing;
But I am stung with goads and whips,
So I build songs like iron ships.

Let it be something for my song,
If it is sometimes swift and strong.

REALITY

Only a starveling singer seeks

The stuff of songs among the Greeks.

Juno is old,

Jove's loves are cold;

Tales over-told.

By a new risen Attic stream
A mortal singer dreamed a dream.
Fixed he not Fancy's habitation,

Nor set in bonds Imagination.

There are new waters, and a new Humanity.
For all old myths give us the dream to be.
We are outwearied with Persephone;
Rather than her, we'll sing Reality.

SONG

I was so chill, and overworn, and sad,
To be a lady was the only joy I had.

I walked the street as silent as a mouse,
Buying fine clothes, and fittings for the house.

But since I saw my love

I wear a simple dress,
And happily I move
Forgetting weariness.

Siegfried Sassoon

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon, the poet whom Masefield hailed as "one of England's most brilliant rising stars," was born September 8, 1886. He was educated at Marlborough and Clare College, Cambridge, and was a captain in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. He fought three times in France, once in Palestine, winning the Military Cross for bringing in wounded on the battlefield.