They fought for honour, these soldier poets, and for lofty principles of right and liberty, but nearly always you may glimpse in their verses that they fought also for a simple, natural love of home or some place in the homeland which they had given their hearts to and were ready to keep inviolate with their lives. As Kipling has it,
God gave all men all earth to love,
But, since our hearts are small,
Ordained for each one spot should prove
Beloved over all,
and the one such spot for Donald Goold Johnson inspired his glowing stanzas to Cambridge, 'Mother and Sons,' written a few months before he sailed for France:
We who have loved thee in days long over,
Mistress immortal and Queen of our hearts;
With the passionate strength of a youthful lover
Take, ere for ever the glow departs,
Ere the flaming glead of our heart's devotion
Flicker and fail as the night blows chill,
The homage that stirs no mock emotion,
'Tis thine, our Mother, to claim it still....
Then whether the sharp death face us daily,
Thy youthful warriors loved of thee,
Thy towers and palaces smiling gaily,
In vision, our youthful eyes may see:
