Welsh Journals

They were happy ones, I know, for he told us so earnestly and sincerely when we sang to him The Song of Farewell and he vowed to come back when the swallows came again.' Does he subscribe to the doctrine of hatred which a thousand scurrilous German pens are emphasizing day by day in verse, and song, and pamphlet? Does he see in Great Britain the arch-enemy who would ruthlessly crush and ruin his Fatherland ? I wonder. I am per- suaded, if Hans is still alive, that there is to be a day of sad awakening for him, that he will see things as they are, and that his whole proud conception of his country, and its destiny will seem to him like a castle of the imagination, built on the most treacherous of sands. But though there is intense longing for that great day, when the cankered militarism of Prussia shall be in its death agony, when faith and hope and love will once more come to the hearts of men, when tortured Belgium shall rise, phoenix-like, from its ashes, with a new lustre and a new glory, and the menace of the mailed fist shall be but as a dark and ugly nightmare which has been and is now gone for Just two blue eyes in a mist of gold And a face caught out of a dream, They made a Poet, so I've been told, Just two blue eyes in a mist of gold, And the heart of the Poet grew bold, so bold That he wrought at a marvellous theme- Just two blue eyes in a mist of gold And a face caught out of a dream. Just two blue eyes in a mist of gold But somebody called them under the mould, Just two blue eyes in a mist of gold, And the heart of the Poet grew cold, so cold That the soul fled out of his theme- Just two blue eyes in a mist of gold And a face caught out of a dream. ever and ever-a longing which translated into action means that the Fatherland of Hans must be crushed and humbled to the very dust so that it too may find its true greatness and strength, yet not one of us, I find, who in those days gone by supped and joked and laughed with Hans, can find it in our hearts to hate him. We simply can't. Germans in the abstract we loath and despise, but Hans,well, we knew him and have but to shut our eyes and see him in the big armchair, with his feet on the mantelpiece and his jolly face and the big pipe and the pot of beer. Perhaps someday, when the clouds have all rolled away and the sky is blue, Hans will come again with the swallows and we four shall sit, and smoke, and talk, not lightly but gravely, of the things that have been and what they now may be. And should that glorious day ever arrive, we shall, I am sure. know each other better and will agree that the world has been mad, but that out of all the agony and tears a new and better world has arisen. T.Q. TWO TRIOLETS And a face caught out of a dream, A. Glyn Prys- Jones