The publishers were kind enough to let me examine
this last book while it was still in the proof sheets. It is the one
great hope book of the war. Every mother and father who has a boy in
the war, every wife who has a husband, every child who has a father
will thrill with a new pride and a new dignity after reading The Fiery
Cross.
WAR AND ITS VOICE
No poet has voiced America's reasons for being in the war as has
Oxenham, and nowhere does he do it better than in "Where Are You
Going, Great-Heart?" the concluding stanza of which sums up compactly
America's high purposes:
"Where are you going, Great-Heart?
'To set all burdened peoples free;
To win for all God's liberty;
To 'stablish His sweet Sovereignty.'
God goeth with you, Great-Heart!"
The Vision Splendid.
To those who go to die in war the poet addresses himself in lines which
he titles "On Eagle Wings":
"Higher than most, to you is given
To live--or in His time, to die;
So, bear you as White Knights of Heaven--
The very flower of chivalry!
Take Him as Pilot by your side,
And 'All is well' whate'er betide."
The Vision Splendid.
"If God be with you, who can be against you?" is the echo that we hear
going and coming behind these great Christian lines. Indeed, behind
every poem that Oxenham writes we can hear the echoes of some great
scriptural word of promise, or hope or faith or courage.
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