citizens of Stratford do not take kindly to his scholastic innovations.
[Footnote: See _William Shakespeare, Pedagogue and Poacher_, a drama,
Richard Garnett.]

If the poet does not appear a brilliant figure in the business world, he
may turn to another field with the confidence that here his race will
vindicate him from the world's charges of sluggishness or weakness. He
is wont proudly to declare, with Joyce Kilmer,

When you say of the making of ballads and songs that it is a woman's
work,
You forget all the fighting poets that have been in every land.
There was Byron, who left all his lady-loves, to fight against the
Turk,
And David, the singing king of the Jews, who was born with a sword
in his hand.
It was yesterday that Rupert Brooke went out to the wars and died,
And Sir Philip Sidney's lyric voice was as sweet as his arm was
strong,
And Sir Walter Raleigh met the axe as a lover meets his bride,
Because he carried in his heart the courage of his song.
[Footnote: Joyce Kilmer, _The Proud Poet_.]

It was only yesterday, indeed, that Rupert Brooke, Francis Ledwidge,
Alan Seeger and Joyce Kilmer made the memory of the soldier poet
lasting. And it cannot be justly charged that the draft carried the
poet, along with the street-loafer, into the fray, an unwilling victim.
From Aeschylus and David to Byron and the recent war poets, the singer
may find plenty of names to substantiate his claim that he glories in
war as his natural element. [Footnote: For poetry dealing with the poet