The Centenary of the Outbreak of the First World War

Today and tomorrow churches in the British Isles are marking the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War.

The First World War, sometimes known as the Great War or the war to end war, was one of the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century. The rapid unfolding of events and the tangle of alliances would draw all the great world powers into the conflict.

Hostilities began on July 28, 1914. Britain entered the war on August 4, 1914.

4 years, 3 months, 1 week and 16 million casualties later hostilities would cease. The world would never be the same again.

To honor the memory of all who died in the carnage of the First World War, military, and civilian, on both sides of the conflict, I am posting three poems. They are the poems of Ivar Campbell, a young Scotsman who survived the horrors of trench warfare on the Western Front only to die from his wounds in Mesopotamia.

Campbell was an affable young man, liked by everybody. His dream was to open a bookshop. He never realized that dream.

My late mother owned a copy of his collected poems, Poems by Ivar Campbell, with Memoir by Guy Ridley. They are taken from that work.

Song.

PEACE, God's own peace,

This it is I bring you;

The quiet song of sleep,

Dear tired heart, I sing you.

Dream, softly dream,

Till solemn death shall find you,

With coronals of roses

Tenderly to bind you.

Peace past understanding,

Dear tired heart, I bring you;

The quiet song of evening

Softly I sing you.

Song.

RIPPLING the face of the stream

The willows bend lowly.

As in a June night's dream

The waters pass slowly.

When I am dead, the willow,

The shy willow weeping,

Shall shadow my earth pillow

And guard my last sleeping.

Song.

WHEN I am dead

The leaves shall shed their foliage

Softly upon my head

Age after age.

Until God calls,

In silence shall my soul brood.

Softly each leaf falls

In the still wood.

Death knows not grief —

He will come, my soul, to thee

Softly as any leaf

Falls from the tree.