Some Desperate Glory (29 page)

To human hopeful things. And the next day's guns

Nor any line-pangs ever quite could blot out

That strangely beautiful entry to War's rout;

Candles they gave us, precious and shared over-rations –

Ulysses found little more in his wanderings without doubt.

‘David of the White Rock', the ‘Slumber Song' so soft, and that

Beautiful tune to which roguish words by Welsh pit boys

Are sung – but never more beautiful than here under the guns' noise.

I
VOR
G
URNEY

 

 

Poem for End

So the last poem is laid flat in its place,

And Crickley with Crucifix Corner leaves from my face

Elizabethans and night-working thoughts – of such grace.

 

And all the dawns that set my thoughts new to making;

Or Crickley dusk that the beech leaves stirred to shaking

Are put aside – there is a book ended; heart aching.

 

Joy and sorrow, and all thoughts a poet thinks,

Walking or turning to music; the wrought-out links

Of fancy to fancy – by Severn or by Artois brinks.

 

Only what's false in this, blood itself would not save,

Sweat would not heighten – the dead Master in his grave

Would my true following of him, my care approve.

 

And more than he, I paid the prices of life

Standing where Rome immortal heard October's strife,

A war poet whose right of honour cuts falsehood like a knife.

 

War poet – his right is of nobler steel – the careful sword –

And night walker will not suffer of praise the word

From the sleepers, the custom-followers, the dead lives unstirred.

 

Only, who thought of England as two thousand years

Must keep of today's life the proper anger and fears:

England that was paid for by building and ploughing and tears.

I
VOR
G
URNEY

 

 

On Passing the New Menin Gate

Who will remember, passing through this Gate,

The unheroic Dead who fed the guns?

Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate, –

Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?

      Crudely renewed, the Salient holds its own.

      Paid are its dim defenders by this pomp;

      Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone,

      The armies who endured that sullen swamp.

 

Here was the world's worst wound. And here with pride

‘Their name liveth for ever,' the Gateway claims.

Was ever an immolation so belied

As these intolerably nameless names?

Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime

Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.

S
IEGFRIED
S
ASSOON

 

 

The Bohemians

Certain people would not clean their buttons,

Nor polish buckles after latest fashions,

Preferred their hair long, putties comfortable,

Barely escaping hanging, indeed hardly able;

In Bridge and smoking without army cautions

Spending hours that sped like evil for quickness,

(While others burnished brasses, earned promotions).

These were those ones who jested in the trench,

While others argued of army ways, and wrenched

What little soul they had still further from shape,

And died off one by one, or became officers.

Without the first of dream, the ghost of notions

Of ever becoming soldiers, or smart and neat,

Surprised as ever to find the army capable

Of sounding ‘Lights out' to break a game of Bridge,

As to fear candles would set a barn alight:

In Artois or Picardy they lie – free of useless fashions.

I
VOR
G
URNEY

 

 

The Watchers

I heard the challenge ‘Who goes there?'

Close-kept but mine through midnight air;

I answered and was recognized

And passed, and kindly thus advised:

‘There's someone crawlin' through the grass

By the red ruin, or there was,

And them machine guns been a firin'

All the time the chaps was wirin',

So Sir if you're goin' out

You'll keep your 'ead well down no doubt.'

 

When will the stern fine ‘Who goes there?'

Meet me again in midnight air?

And the gruff sentry's kindness, when

Will kindness have such power again?

It seems as, now I wake and brood,

And know my hour's decrepitude,

That on some dewy parapet

The sentry's spirit gazes yet,

Who will not speak with altered tone

When I at last am seen and known.

E
DMUND
B
LUNDEN

 

 

The Silent One

Who died on the wires, and hung there, one of two –

Who for his hours of life had chattered through

Infinite lovely chatter of Bucks accent;

Yet faced unbroken wires; stepped over, and went,

A noble fool, faithful to his stripes – and ended.

But I weak, hungry, and willing only for the chance

Of line – to fight in the line, lay down under unbroken

Wires, and saw the flashes, and kept unshaken.

Till the politest voice – a finicking accent, said:

‘Do you think you might crawl through there: there's a hole?' In the afraid

Darkness shot at; I smiled, as politely replied –

‘I'm afraid not, Sir.' There was no hole, no way to be seen.

Nothing but chance of death, after tearing of clothes.

Kept flat, and watched the darkness, hearing bullets whizzing –

And thought of music – and swore deep heart's oaths

(Polite to God) – and retreated and came on again.

Again retreated – and a second time faced the screen.

I
VOR
G
URNEY

 

 

I Saw England – July Night

She was a village

Of lovely knowledge

The high roads left her aside, she was forlorn, a maid –

Water ran there, dusk hid her, she climbed four-wayed.

Brown-golden windows showed last folk not yet asleep;

Water ran, was a centre of silence deep,

Fathomless deeps of pricked sky, almost fathomless

Hallowed an upward gaze in pale satin of blue.

And I was happy indeed, of mind, soul, body even

Having got given

A sign undoubtful of dear England few

Doubt, not many have seen,

That Will Squele he knew and so was shriven.

Home of Twelfth Night – Edward Thomas by Arras fallen,

Borrow and Hardy, Sussex tales out of Roman heights callen.

No madrigals or field-songs to my all reverent whim;

Till I got back I was dumb.

I
VOR
G
URNEY

 

 

The Interview

Death I have often faced

In the damp trench – or poisoned waste:

Shell or shot, gas or flying steel, bayonet –

But only once by one bullet my arm was wet

With blood. Death faced me there, Death it was that I faced.

But now by no means may it come to me.

Mercy of Death noways vouchsafed to pain.

Were but those times of battle to come again!

Or even boat-sailing, danger on a mimic inland sea!

Death moaning, Death flying, shrieking in air.

Desiring its mark sufficient everywhere – everywhere.

Interview enough. But now I can not get near

Such challenge or dear enmity; pain more than fear

Oppresses me – Would that might come again!

Death in the narrow trench … or wide in the fields.

Death in the Reserve, where the earth wild beautiful flowers yields.

Death met – outfaced – but here: not to be got.

Prayed for, truly desired, obtained not –

A lot past dreadfulness, an unhuman lot.

For never Man was meant to be denied Chance

Of Ending pain past strength – O for France! For France!

Death walked freely – one might be sought of him

Or seek, in twilight or first light of morning dim.

Death dreadful that scared the cheeks of blood,

Took friends, spoilt any happy true-human mood,

Shrieked in the near air – threatened from up on high.

Dreadful, dreadful. But not to be come by

Now, confined – no Interview is ever here.

And worse than Death is known in the spirit of fear.

Death is a thing desired, never to be had at all –

Spirit for Death cries, nothing hears; nothing granted here. O

If Mercy would but hear the cry of the spirit grow

From waking – till Death seems far beyond a right,

And dark is the spirit has all right to be bright.

Death is not here – save mercy grant it. When

Was cruelty such known last among like-and-like men?

An Interview? It is cried for – and not known –

Not found. Death absent what thing is truly Man's own?

Beaten down continually, continually beaten clean down.

I
VOR
G
URNEY

 

 

Two Voices

‘There's something in the air,' he said

      In the farm parlour cool and bare;

The plain words in his hearers bred

      A tumult, yet in silence there

All waited; wryly gay, he left the phrase,

Ordered the march and bade us go our ways.

 

‘We're going South, man'; as he spoke

      The howitzer with huge ping-bang

Racked the light hut; as thus he broke

      The death-news, bright the skylarks sang;

He took his riding-crop and humming went

Among the apple-trees all bloom and scent.

 

Now far withdraws the roaring night

      Which wrecked our flower after the first

Of those two voices; misty light

      Shrouds Thiepval Wood and all its worst:

But still ‘There's something in the air' I hear,

And still ‘We're going South, man,' deadly near.

E
DMUND
B
LUNDEN

 

 

Gouzeaucourt: The Deceitful Calm

How unpurposed, how inconsequential

Seemed those southern lines when in the pallor

           Of the dying winter

           First we went there!

 

Grass thin-waving in the wind approached them,

Red roofs in the near view feigned survival,

           Lovely mockers, when we

           There took over.

 

There war's holiday seemed, nor though at known times

Gusts of flame and jingling steel descended

           On the bare tracks, would you

           Picture death there.

 

Snow or rime-frost made a solemn silence,

Bluish darkness wrapped in dangerous safety;

           Old hands thought of tidy

           Living-trenches!

 

There it was, my dears, that I departed,

Scarce a greater traitor ever! There too

           Many of you soon paid for

           That false mildness.

E
DMUND
B
LUNDEN

 

 

War Books

What did they expect of our toil and extreme

Hunger – the perfect drawing of a heart's dream?

Did they look for a book of wrought art's perfection,

Who promised no reading, nor praise, nor publication?

Out of the heart's sickness the spirit wrote.

For delight, or to escape hunger, or of war's worst anger,

When the guns died to silence and men would gather sense

Somehow together, and find this was life indeed.

And praise another's nobleness, or to Cotswold get hence.

There we wrote – Corbie Ridge, or in Gonnehem at rest.

Or Fauquissart or world's death songs, ever the best.

One made sorrows' praise passing the church where silence

Opened for the long quivering strokes of the bell –

Another wrote all soldiers' praise, and of France and night's stars –

 

Served his guns, got immortality, and died well.

But Ypres played another trick with its danger on me,

Kept still the needing and loving-of-action body;

Gave no candles, and nearly killed me twice as well.

And no souvenirs, though I risked my life in the stuck Tanks.

Yet there was praise of Ypres, love came sweet in hospital –

And old Flanders went under to long ages of plough thought in my pages.

I
VOR
G
URNEY

 

 

A Fallodon Memory

One afternoon I watched him as he stood

In the twilight of his wood.

Among the firs he'd planted, forty years away,

Tall, and quite still, and almost blind,

World patience in his face, stood Edward Grey;

Not listening,

For it was at the end of summer, when no birds sing:

Only the bough's faint dirge accompanied his mind

Absorbed in some Wordsworthian slow self-communing.

 

In lichen-coloured homespun clothes he seemed

So merged with stem and branch and twinkling leaves

That almost I expected, looking away, to find

When glancing there again, that I had daylight dreamed

His figure, as when some trick of sun and shadow deceives.