Voices of Silence (14 page)

Ah Minnie! how our feelings change,

For now I hear your voice with dread,

And hasten to get out of range

Ere you me on the landscape spread.

Your lightest whisper makes me thrill,

Your presence makes me hide my head,

Your voice can make me hasten still –

But ’tis away from you instead.

You fickle jade! you traitrous minx!

We once exchanged love’s old sweet tales;

Now where effulgent star-shell winks

Your raucous screech my ear assails.

No place is sacred, I declare,

Your manners most immodest are,

You force your blatant presence where

Maidens should be particular.

You uninvited do intrude,

You force an entrance to my couch,

Though if I’ve warning you’re about

I’ll not be there, for that I’ll vouch.

Name once most loved of all your sex,

Now hated with a loathing great,

When next my harassed soul you vex

You’ll get some back at any rate.

Above the trench I heard the night wind sigh,

Across the tattered sandbags moonbeams lay,

While Flanders stars shone overhead, and I

Alone with thoughts of you at close of day.

The cannon’s angry roar had died away

And left the stillness of a Summer’s night

For one sweet hour of peace that would not stay,

And I could rest before the coming fight.

And then I saw a star shoot in the West . . .

I wonder if beyond the silver sea

It found you somewhere in its loving quest –

And pressed a kiss upon your lips from me?

Raymond Heywood

Talk not to me of vain delights,

Of Regent Street or Piccadilly.

A newer London, rarer sights

I visit nightly willy-nilly.

When daylight wanes and dusk is falling

We start out clad in gum boots thigh

To wander through the gloom appalling,

Through crump holes deep in mud knee-high.

From Gordon Farm to Oxford Street

(These duck-boards are the very devil.)

Where strange concussions fill the air.

(I wish they’d keep the –
CENSORED
– things level).

Through Oxford Street we gaily slide,

And call at Batt. H.Q. to see

If there be aught that we can do

For them. (Well, just a spot for me!)

Then on through Regent Street, and thence

To Zouave Wood, where plain to see

That ‘Spring is Coming’, hence the change

From winter’s gloom to verdancy.

(For authority see D.R.O.)

Here Foresters make nightly play,

And in the mud hold revel high,

Recalling fancy stunts performed

At Shoreham, and at Bletchingley.

Should you but care to journey on

You’ll reach, by various tortuous ways,

To Streets named Grafton, Conduit, Bond,

Where memory ever fondly strays.

And each in some peculiar way

Has charms not easy to define.

So thus the London which we knew

Remembered is along the line.

The leafy glades of ‘Maida Vale’

Are bright with bursting may,

And daffodils and violets pale

Bedew ‘The Milky Way;’

There’s perfect peace in ‘Regent Street’,

In ‘Holborn’ rural charm,

But nowhere smells the Spring so sweet

As down by ‘Stinking Farm’.

And as I rode through ‘Dead Cow Lane’,

Beneath the dungeon keep

Of ‘Wobbly House’ that tops the plain,

I saw a maiden peep;

Her glance was like the dappled doe’s,

She blushed with shy alarm,

As pink as any Rambler-rose

That climbs at ‘Stinking Farm’.

O maiden, if it be my fate

To win so great a boon,

At ‘Hell-fire Corner’ I will wait

Beneath the silver moon;

I’ll swear no maid but thee I know

As softly arm-in-arm

Along the ‘Blarney Road’ we go

That leads to ‘Stinking Farm’.

And we will wander, O my Queen,

By many a mossy nook,

Where limpid waters flow between

The banks of ‘Beery Brook’;

In ‘Purgatory’ we will roam

Where blow the breezes warm,

If thou wilt come and make thy home,

O sweet, at ‘Stinking Farm’.

Edward de Stein

I hear the dull low thunder of the guns

Beyond the hills that doze uneasily,

A sullen doomful growl that ever runs

From end to end of the heavy freighted sky:

A friend of mine writes, squatted on the floor,

And scrapes by yellow spluttering candle light.

‘Ah! hush!’ he breathes, and gazes at the door

That creaks on rusty hinge, in pale affright.

(No words spoke he, nor I, for well we knew

What rueful things these sounds did tell.)

A pause – I hear the trees sway sighing thro’

The gloom, like dismal moan of hollow knell,

Then out across the dark, and startling me

Bursts forth a laugh, a shout of drunken glee!

R. Watson Kerr

Oh! it’s roaming in the gloaming

When the birds have gone to roost;

When the evening hate’s beginning,

And Machine Guns do a boost;

When you’re crawling on the ground,

While the bullets flick around,

Oh! it’s very jolly roaming in the gloaming.

Just roaming in the gloaming

When the flares drop on your head.

And you wonder if your friends at home

Will know that you are dead;

When before your straining eyes

Countless Huns appear to rise,

It’s a merry business roaming in the gloaming.

Oh! it’s roaming in the gloaming

On an old decaying cow,

When your head gets in its stomach

And you’re mixed up anyhow;

When enveloped by the smell,

You can only whisper ‘H——’.

It’s a weary business roaming in the gloaming.

Just roaming in the gloaming

When the rain begins to fall;

When you feel convinced you’ve lost your way

And won’t get home at all;

When you shiver and perspire,

And trip over German wire,

Oh! it’s then you’re fond of roaming in the gloaming.

Oh! it’s roaming in the gloaming

When you’re safely back at last;

When your sentries haven’t shot you,

And the rum is flowing fast;

When you write a grand report

Saying more than all you ought,

That’s quite the best of roaming in the gloaming.

I oft go out at night-time

When all the sky’s a-flare

And little lights of battle

Are dancing in the air.

I use my pick and shovel

To dig a little hole,

And there I sit till morning –

A listening-patrol.

A silly little sickle

Of moon is hung above;

Within a pond beside me

The frogs are making love:

I see the German sap-head;

A cow is lying there,

Its belly like a barrel,

Its legs are in the air.

The big guns rip like thunder,

The bullets whizz o’erhead,

But o’er the sea in England

Good people lie abed.

And over there in England

May every honest soul

Sleep sound while we sit watching

On listening patrol.

Patrick MacGill

Men are queer things right through – whatever make –

But Tommy Atkins really takes the cake.

Which said, see in your mind (my point to prove)

Two soldiers, frozen and afraid to move,

On listening patrol. For four dead hours

Afraid to move or whisper, cough or sneeze,

Waiting in wonder whether ’twas the breeze

Moved in the grass, shaking the frozen flowers

Just then. Germans were out that night, we knew,

With bombs to throw, and so we lay, we two,

With rifle ready at shoulder, and . . . What’s that

Twanging the wire (both heard the sound) – a rat?

Or the Bosche bomber creeping, creeping nigher

To hurl death into the trench behind us? Both

Turned barrels ’gainst the unknown, ready to fire,

Waiting to fire should ever it take form

Of human body. – Waiting, being loath

To shoot at nothing, making so alarm

And laughter in the trench we guarded. Here

Sounds a hoarse whisper against my ear:

Something it utters – ‘What is it?’ I hiss,

Soft as a serpent; and upon my oath

My comrade covering still the sound, said – this.

This, while the unknown stalked, and fear was chilly

Like ice around our hearts – ‘I say old chap’

(My laughter followed like a thunder-clap)

‘Couldn’t I do some beef and piccalilli.’

Men are quaint things world over, willy nilly.

But R.E.K. – you take the – piccalilli.

F.W. Harvey

No Man’s Land is an eerie sight

At early dawn in the pale grey light.

Never a house and never a hedge

In No Man’s Land from edge to edge,

And never a living soul walks there

To taste the fresh of the morning air; –

Only some lumps of rotting clay,

That were friends or foemen yesterday.

What are the bounds of No Man’s Land?

You see them clearly on either hand,

A mound of rag-bags grey in the sun,

Or a furrow of brown where the earthworks run

From the Eastern hills to the Western sea,

Through field or forest o’er river and lea;

No man may pass them, but aim you well

And Death rides across on the bullet or shell.

But No Man’s Land is a goblin sight

When patrols crawl over at dead o’ night;

Boche or British, Belgian or French,

You dice with death when you cross the trench.

When the ‘rapid’, like fire-flies in the dark,

Flits down the parapet spark by spark,

And you drop for cover to keep your head

With your face on the breast of the four months’ dead.

The man who ranges in No Man’s Land

Is dogged by shadows on either hand

When the star-shell’s flare, as it bursts o’erhead,

Scares the great grey rats that feed on the dead,

And the bursting bomb or the bayonet-snatch

May answer the click of your safety-catch,

For the lone patrol, with his life in his hand,

Is hunting for blood in No Man’s Land.

James H. Knight-Adkin

There were dead men on the wire

Lying in the bloodied mire –

Staring wildly at the skies

With their cold and sightless eyes –

Stars grinned down with hideous faces,

And the moon was mocking them

With grimaces.

Raymond Heywood