While trying to find out if the author Aldous Huxley wrote any poems during the First World War, I discovered another female WW1 poet but cannot find out any definite information about Mildred - whether Huxley was her maiden name, married name or a pen name... However, it would seem from the following poem that she may have been British.
If anyone can help please get in touch.
OXFORD
And I — I watched them working, dreaming, playing,
Saw their young bodies fit the mind's desire,
Felt them reach outward, upward, still obeying
The passionate dictates of their hidden fire.
Yet here and there some greybeard breathed derision,
"Too much of luxury, too soft an age!
Your careless Galahads will see no vision,
Your knights will make no mark on honour's page."
No mark? - Go ask the broken fields in Flanders,
Ask the great dead who watched in ancient Troy,
Ask the old moon as round the world she wanders
What of the men who were my hope and joy!
They are but fragments of Imperial splendour,
Handfuls of might amid a mighty host,
Yet I, who saw them go with proud surrender,
May surely claim to love them first and most.
They who had all, gave all. Their half-writ story
Lies in the empty halls they knew so well,
But they, the knights of God, shall see His glory,
And find the Grail ev'n in the fire of hell.
Mildred Huxley
Poetry:
"Shadows" (Mar 1910)
"World Conquerers" (May 1911)
"Recalled" (Aug 1911)
"Big Boy's Lullaby" (Mar 1912)
"On the New Road" (Oct 1912)
"As a Man Soweth" (Jun 1913)
"Subalterns: a song of Oxford" (Sep 1916)
Also:
From A Treasury of War Poetry, ... 1914-1919 (1917):
"Subalterns", p. 127; "To My Godson", p. 401.
According to Catherine W. Reilly in her fantastic book “English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography” (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1978), on p 177, Mildred Huxley had a poem or poems published in 8 WW1 anthologies.
