Sir,—The letter of Mr Leveson Gower in your issue last Monday [14 July] emboldens me to say that his idea of numbering the graves, and so doing away with the dull ranks of unlovely stones, must commend itself to all who in their travels abroad have noted the restful effect of treating the camp santo as a garden and allowing the names of the dead to be inscribed on the wall of the colonnade that surrounds the place of rest.  In the sketch plans that appeared of the future cemeteries which the War Graves Commission has in mind it was clear that a surrounding wall was part of the design.  It would be possible to utilise these walls for the names of the heroic dead, and a record of the exact spot of each grave could be kept at the caretaker’s lodge.  The general effect of the burial ground, without the monotonous headstones all to pattern, would be enhanced, and to prevent a like monotony freedom of choice of design on tablets of limited size might be granted to the relatives of those whose remains lie at rest in what could be made very “gardens of the Lord.”  Some years ago my old friend, Mr. G. F. Watts, the painter, talking on this subject, asked why we were so slow in adopting the Continental idea of the camp santo with its cloistral wall, and so saving our beautiful churchyards from the vulgarities and hideosities of the monument maker.

(Times, 21 July 1919, p. 8)

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Haunted it is by happy, happy days,
        But haunted by the darkest day of all.
    The earliest sunbeams from the east that fall
Write one name only with their golden rays.
Her love the silent saffron curtains praise,
    Her name is prinked in pattern on the wall,
    ‘Alice’ the pictures from their places call,
‘Alice’ the hearth-tongues crackle as they blaze.

The books from off the shelves are strangely moved,
    Or opened lie as if a spirit read,
        Her laughter rings, her silent voice is heard,
We join again in argument she loved—
        The lamp burns low—the fire must needs be
            stirred—
    How cold, how dark the room—for she is dead!

(Valete: Tennyson and other Memorial Poems, p. 161)

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He made men seers, young dreamers to desire
    The one thing good – to do the difficult right;
    He cast Truth’s heart into the fiercest fight,
And bade us battle on and never tire;
He kindled hope, he set dead faith afire
    Gave workers will, filled eyes with love and sight
    And, by the lamp of Service, thro’ the night
Led learning from the ruts and from the mire.

Not praise nor scorn, not riches, honour, fame,
    Could tempt his hand a moment from the plough,
        Nor the world-deafening clamour of the daws
        Pecking about the ploughshare harm his cause;
    Let others reap – he claimed to serve and sow—
And as he toiled, the Lord of Harvest came.

(Spectator, 60 (5 November 1887), 1488)

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The Abbot sat high in his raftered hall,
        The monks of old Vanner they made good cheer;
To-morrow, to-morrow, whatever befall,
    Will Owen Glendower go hunting the deer.
Right merry goes forward the feasting hour,
    And Mawddach merrily murmurs near,
But Owen Glendower, his brows still lower,
    And Howel of Nannau keeps hold of his spear.

The harpers up in the gallery played
    Till the song, like wine, through the heart’s blood ran;
They sang of the joyaunce that peace had made,
    And the sorrow of war since the feud began;
Loud, loud was the laughter and clatter of plate,
    The clanking of trencher and clinking of can,
As they cursed the devil that caused the hate,
    And blessed the good hunt that had broken the ban.

The stars had scarce faded, the hounds were away,
    The herons of Hengwrt with clamour awoke,
But the sun cannot shine o’er the shallows to-day,
    The shoulders of Idris with clouds are a-smoke;
There are sounds in the branches and sighs in the air,
    And hoarsely the ravens far over them croak,
Glendower’s dark eyes, they are restless with care,
    And Howel rides on, but no word has he spoke.

“Now halt ye,” cries Howell, “my merry men, here,
    Keep the horses in shelter, the hounds by the wall;
Glendower and I will go follow the deer,—
    At need, through the woodland, our bugles shall call.”
They are lost in the forest, and up springs a doe
    And dances snow-shite through the bracken fern tall:
“Shoot, Howel! yon beauty shall count to thy bow,
    They shall bless thee who feast with the Abbot in hall.”

There’s a twang like a harp-string that breaks, and the sound
    Of a bolt, on a breastplate that harmlessly fell;
Glendower, escaped from a treacherous wound,
    Has turned on his murd’rer full face in the dell.
Though the bolt of his vengeance may err as it fly,
    There’s a sword at his girdle shall yet serve him well;
For Owen Glendower, fair fighting, will die,
    Or Howel of Nannau go swift into hell.

Not a word from their lips—there is speech in their eyes!
    All the wrongs of past years to the combat upstart;
They reel at the onset—they fall but to rise,
    Their blades fly to shivers, they stagger apart!
Then Owen Glendower went back for a pace,—
    A bull in his fury, a fox in his art,—
    And Howel of Nannau sank stabbed to the heart!

Now haste thee, Glendower, for red is thy hand,
    And Howel’s brave riders are under the lea;
Long as priest by the altar in Vanner shall stand,
    No shriving of soul for thy clansman or thee.
Though the curlew may call, and the raven may croak,
    No tongue shall cry murder when eyes cannot see;
For a coffin, hard by thee, stands hollow the oak,—
    Hide the heart thou hast hushed in the heart of a tree!

With the strength of a giant he shouldered the corse,
    Climbed up to the rent the fierce lightning had made,
There flung him, feet forward, with pitiless force,
    And cast in the hollow his bow and his blade.
“False traitor!” he cried, “though the oak may keep well
    Thy bones and thy deed of dark shame in the glade.
It shall groan with thy groans of remorse down in hell
    Till the ghost, made in Nannau this morn, shall be laid.”

For centuries four, from the oak on the hill
   Came the sounds of the moaning of men when the die,
And the woodpecker stopped as he tapped with his bill,
    And the jay with a scream from its branches would fly;
All the deer in the forest went scampering past,
    The hound to its groaning would utter a cry,
The huntsman who heard it, he galloped more fast,
    And the stout-hearted woodsman sped silently by,

But the tree kept the secret shut up in its heart,
    Till a wind from the west, at the fall of the year,
Plucked the roots from the ground, tore the great trunk apart,
    And cast from its bosom the load of its fear;
And there, with his bones bleached to white as he stood,
    With the dirk through his ribs and the dagger-wound clear,
Was Howel of Nannau, who died in the wood
    When Owen Glendower went hunting the deer.

(Pall Mall Magazine, 3 (July 1894), 353-61)

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