Front matter

NEW YORK AGENTS LONGMANS, GREEN & Co. FOURTH AVENUE AND 30TH STREET

REBEL VERSES

BY

BERNARD GILBERT

OXFORD B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD STREET MCMXVIII

By the Same Author

VERSE: Lincolnshire Lays; Farming Lays; Gone To the War; War Workers.

DRAMA: Eldorado; Their Father's Will; The Ruskington Poacher.

FICTION: What shall it Profit? Tattershall Castle; The Yellow Flag.

POLITICAL: Farmers and Tariff Reform: What Every Farmer Wants: The Farm Labourer's Fix.

MISCELLANEOUS: Living Lincoln; Fortunes for Farmers.

From The New Witness

Mr. Bernard Gilbert is one of the discoveries of the War. For years, it seems, he has been writing poetry, but it is only recently that an inapprehensive country has awakened to the fact. Now he is taking his rightful place among our foremost singers. What William Barnes was to Dorset, what T. E. Brown was to the Manx people—this is Mr. Gilbert to the folk of his native county of Lincoln. He has interpreted their lives, their sorrows, their aspirations, with a surprising fidelity. Mr. Gilbert never loses his grip upon realities. One feels that he knows the men of whom he writes in their most intimate moods; knows, too, their defects, which he does not shrink from recording. There is little of the dreamy idealism of the South in the peasant people of Lincolnshire. The outwardly respectable chapel-goer who asks himself, in a moment of introspection But why not have a good time here? Why should the Devil have all the beer? is true to type. But he has, too, his softer moods. Fidelity in friendship, courage, resource and perseverance—these are typical of the men of the Fens.

TO MORLEY ROBERTS

Acknowledgments to the Editors of the: English Review New Age Colour Westminster Gazette New Witness To-Day Clarion Australian Triad Bystander Musical Student and Nash's Magazine in whose columns these verses have appeared during 1917.

Contents

PAGE

The Rebel 1

Song of Revolt 2

There aint no God 3

The Night is Dark 4

Return 8

Nietzsche 9

Sacrament 11

Fightin' Tomlinson 12

The_Labourer's_Hymn 15

Oliver Cromwell 17

Anywhere but Here 20

East Wind 21

Peter Wray 24

Oh Fools 26

Elfin Dancer 28

A. G. Webster 30

Oh to be Home 31

Give Soldiers a Vote 32

Alone 33

Flesh of our Flesh 35

This Town is Hell 36

Timberland Bells 38

Dame Peach 39

Friends 41

Charing Cross 43

Love not too Much 44

Machiavelli 46

Remorse 47

The Mandrake's Horrid Scream 48

One Day 51

No Wife 52

To an Old Friend 57

Is it Finished 59

Oh Lincoln, City of my Dreams 60

The Fool 61