The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry (12 page)

All broken sounds and movements of the day,

To emptiness and listlessness, a grey

Unhappy silence tremulous with the poise

Of hearts intent with fearful expectation

      And secret preparation,

Silence that is not peace but bated breath,

      A listening for death,

100                 The quivering prelude to tremendous noise.

O give us one more day of sun and leaves,

The laughing soldiers and the laughing stream,

And when at dawn the loud destruction cleaves

The silence, and (like men that walk in dream,

Knowing the stern ordeal has begun)

We climb the trench, and cross the wire and start,

We'll stumble through the shell-bursts with good heart

Like boys who race through meadows in the sun.

Martin Armstrong

Nameless Men

Around me, when I wake or sleep,

Men strange to me their vigils keep;

And some were boys but yesterday,

Upon the village green at play.

Their faces I shall never know;

Like sentinels they come and go.

In grateful love I bow the knee

For nameless men who die for me.

There is in earth or heaven no room

10             Where I may flee this dreadful doom.

For ever it is understood

I am a man redeemed by blood.

I must walk softly all my days

Down on my redeemed and solemn ways.

Christ, take the men I bring to Thee,

The men who watch and die for me.

Edward Shillito

Greater Love

Red lips are not so red

     As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.

Kindness of wooed and wooer

Seems shame to their love pure.

O Love, your eyes lose lure

     When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!

Your slender attitude

     Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,

Rolling and rolling there

10             Where God seems not to care;

Till the fierce Love they bear

     Cramps them in death's extreme decrepitude.

Your voice sings not so soft, –

     Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft, –

Your dear voice is not dear, Gentle, and evening clear,

As theirs whom none now hear

     Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed.

Heart, you were never hot,

20                  Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;

And though your hand be pale,

Paler are all which trail

Your cross through flame and hail:

     Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not.

Wilfred Owen

In Memoriam Private D. Sutherland killed in Action in the German Trench, May 16, 1916, and the Others who Died

So you were David's father,

And he was your only son,

And the new-cut peats are rotting

And the work is left undone,

Because of an old man weeping,

Just an old man in pain,

For David, his son David,

That will not come again.

Oh, the letters he wrote you,

10             And I can see them still,

Not a word of the fighting

But just the sheep on the hill

And how you should get the crops in

Ere the year got stormier,

And the Bosches have got his body,

And I was his officer.

You were only David's father,

But I had fifty sons

When we went up in the evening

20             Under the arch of the guns,

And we came back at twilight –

O God! I heard them call

To me for help and pity

That could not help at all.

Oh, never will I forget you,

My men that trusted me,

More my sons than your fathers',

For they could only see

The little helpless babies

30             And the young men in their pride.

They could not see you dying,

And hold you while you died.

Happy and young and gallant,

They saw their first-born go,

But not the strong limbs broken

And the beautiful men brought low,

The piteous writhing bodies,

They screamed, ‘Don't leave me, Sir,‘

For they were only your fathers

40             But I was your officer.

E. A. Mackintosh

To his Love

He's gone, and all our plans

     Are useless indeed.

We'll walk no more on Cotswold

     Where the sheep feed

     Quietly and take no heed.

His body that was so quick

     Is not as you

Knew it, on Severn river

     Under the blue

10                  Driving our small boat through.

You would not know him now…

     But still he died

Nobly, so cover him over

     With violets of pride

     Purple from Severn side.

Cover him, cover him soon!

     And with thick-set

Masses of memoried flowers –

     Hide that red wet

20                  Thing I must somehow forget.

Ivor Gurney

Trench Poets

I knew a man, he was my chum,

But he grew blacker every day,

And would not brush the flies away,

Nor blanch however fierce the hum

Of passing shells; I used to read,

To rouse him, random things from Donne;

Like ‘Get with child a mandrake-root,‘

But you can tell he was far gone,

For he lay gaping, mackerel-eyed,

10             And stiff, and senseless as a post

Even when that old poet cried

‘I long to talk with some old lover's ghost.'

I tried the Elegies one day,

But he, because he heard me say

‘What needst thou have more covering than a man?‘

Grinned nastily, and so I knew

The worms had got his brains at last.

There was one thing that I might do

To starve the worms; I racked my head

20             For healthy things and quoted ‘
Maud
.‘

His grin got worse and I could see

He sneered at passion's purity.

He stank so badly, though we were great chums

I had to leave him; then rats ate his thumbs.

Edgell Rickword

Before Action

By all the glories of the day,

     And the cool evening's benison,

By the last sunset touch that lay

     Upon the hills when day was done,

By beauty lavishly outpoured

     And blessings carelessly received,

By all the days that I have lived

     Make me a soldier, Lord.

By all of all man's hopes and fears,

10                  And all the wonders poets sing,

The laughter of unclouded years,

     And every sad and lovely thing;

By the romantic ages stored

     With high endeavour that was his,

By all his mad catastrophes

     Make me a man, O Lord.

I, that on my familiar hill

     Saw with uncomprehending eyes

A hundred of Thy sunsets spill

20                  Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice,

Ere the sun swings his noonday sword

     Must say good-bye to all of this; –

By all delights that I shall miss,

     Help me to die, O Lord.

W. N. Hodgson

Into Battle

The naked earth is warm with Spring,

     And with green grass and bursting trees

Leans to the sun's gaze glorying,

     And quivers in the sunny breeze;

And Life is Colour and Warmth and Light,

     And a striving evermore for these;

And he is dead who will not fight;

     And who dies fighting has increase.

The fighting man shall from the sun

10                  Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth;

Speed with the light-foot winds to run,

     And with the trees to newer birth;

And find, when fighting shall be done,

     Great rest, and fullness after dearth.

All the bright company of Heaven

     Hold him in their high comradeship,

The Dog-Star, and the Sisters Seven,

     Orion's Belt and sworded hip.

The woodland trees that stand together,

20                  They stand to him each one a friend;

They gently speak in the windy weather;

     They guide to valley and ridge's end.

The kestrel hovering by day,

     And the little owls that call by night,

Bid him be swift and keen as they,

     As keen of ear, as swift of sight.

The blackbird sings to him, ‘Brother, brother,

     If this be the last song you shall sing,

Sing well, for you may not sing another;

30                  Brother, sing.'

In dreary doubtful waiting hours,

     Before the brazen frenzy starts,

The horses show him nobler powers;

     O patient eyes, courageous hearts!

And when the burning moment breaks,

     And all things else are out of mind,

And only Joy-of-Battle takes

     Him by the throat, and makes him blind,

Through joy and blindness he shall know,

40                  Not caring much to know, that still

Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so

     That it be not the Destined Will.

The thundering line of battle stands,

     And in the air Death moans and sings:

But Day shall clasp him with strong hands,

     And Night shall fold him in soft wings.

Julian Grenfell

Lights Out

I have come to the borders of sleep,

The unfathomable deep

Forest where all must lose

Their way, however straight,

Or winding, soon or late;

They cannot choose.

Many a road and track

That, since the dawn's first crack,

Up to the forest brink,

10             Deceived the travellers,

Suddenly now blurs,

And in they sink.

Here love ends,

Despair, ambition ends,

All pleasure and all trouble,

Although most sweet or bitter,

Here ends in sleep that is sweeter

Than tasks most noble.

There is not any book

20             Or face of dearest look

That I would not turn from now

To go into the unknown

I must enter and leave alone

I know not how.

The tall forest towers;

Its cloudy foliage lowers

Ahead, shelf above shelf;

Its silence I hear and obey

That I may lose my way

30             And myself.

Edward Thomas

‘
I have a rendezvous with Death
'

     I have a rendezvous with Death

At some disputed barricade,

When Spring comes back with rustling shade

And apple-blossoms fill the air –

I have a rendezvous with Death

When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

     It may be he shall take my hand

And lead me into his dark land

And close my eyes and quench my breath –

10             It may be I shall pass him still.

I have a rendezvous with Death

On some scarred slope of battered hill,

When Spring comes round again this year

And the first meadow-flowers appear.

     God knows ‘twere better to be deep

Pillowed in silk and scented down,

Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,

Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,

Where hushed awakenings are dear…

20             But I've a rendezvous with Death

At midnight in some flaming town,

When Spring trips north again this year,

And I to my pledged word am true,

I shall not fail that rendezvous.

Alan Seeger

Two Sonnets

I

Saints have adored the lofty soul of you.

Poets have whitened at your high renown.

We stand among the many millions who

Do hourly wait to pass your pathway down.

You, so familiar, once were strange: we tried

To live as of your presence unaware.

But now in every road on every side

We see your straight and steadfast signpost there.

I think it like that signpost in my land,

10             Hoary and tall, which pointed me to go

Upward, into the hills, on the right hand,

Where the mists swim and the winds shriek and blow,

A homeless land and friendless, but a land

I did not know and that I wished to know.

II

Such, such is Death: no triumph: no defeat:

Only an empty pail, a slate rubbed clean,

A merciful putting away what has been.

And this we know: Death is not Life effete,

Life crushed, the broken pail. We who have seen

So marvellous things know well the end not yet.

Victor and vanquished are a-one in death:

Coward and brave: friend, foe. Ghosts do not say