The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry (13 page)

‘Come, what was your record when you drew breath?'

10                    But a big blot has hid each yesterday

So poor, so manifestly incomplete.

And your bright Promise, withered long and sped,

Is touched, stirs, rises, opens and grows sweet

And blossoms and is you, when you are dead.

Charles Hamilton Sorley

1914: The Soldier

If I should die, think only this of me:

     That there's some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England. There shall be

     In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

     Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,

A body of England's, breathing English air,

     Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

10                  A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

       Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

     And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

       In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Rupert Brooke

The Mother

Written after reading Rupert Brooke's sonnet,
‘The Soldier'

If you should die, think only this of me

In that still quietness where is space for thought,

Where parting, loss and bloodshed shall not be,

And men may rest themselves and dream of nought:

That in some place a mystic mile away

One whom you loved has drained the bitter cup

Till there is nought to drink; has faced the day

Once more, and now, has raised the standard up.

And think, my son, with eyes grown clear and dry

10             She lives as though for ever in your sight,

Loving the things
you
loved, with heart aglow

For country, honour, truth, traditions high,

– Proud that you paid their price. (And if some night

Her heart should break – well, lad, you will not know.)

May Herschel-Clark

‘
I tracked a dead man down a trench
'

I tracked a dead man down a trench,

     I knew not he was dead.

They told me he had gone that way,

     And there his foot-marks led.

The trench was long and close and curved,

     It seemed without an end;

And as I threaded each new bay

     I thought to see my friend.

I went there stooping to the ground.

10                  For, should I raise my head,

Death watched to spring; and how should then

     A dead man find the dead?

At last I saw his back. He crouched

     As still as still could be,

And when I called his name aloud

     He did not answer me.

The floor-way of the trench was wet

     Where he was crouching dead:

The water of the pool was brown,

     20                    And round him it was red.

I stole up softly where he stayed

     With head hung down all slack,

And on his shoulders laid my hands

     And drew him gently back.

And then, as I had guessed, I saw

     His head, and how the crown –

I saw then why he crouched so still,

     And why his head hung down.

W. S. S. Lyon

Ballad of the Three Spectres

As I went up by Ovillers

     In mud and water cold to the knee,

There went three jeering, fleering spectres,

     That walked abreast and talked of me.

The first said, ‘Here's a right brave soldier

     That walks the dark unfearingly;

Soon he'll come back on a fine stretcher,

     And laughing for a nice Blighty.'

The second, ‘Read his face, old comrade,

10                  No kind of lucky chance I see;

One day he'll freeze in mud to the marrow,

     Then look his last on Picardie.'

Though bitter the word of these first twain

     Curses the third spat venomously;

‘He'll stay untouched till the war's last dawning

     Then live one hour of agony.'

Liars the first two were. Behold me

     At sloping arms by one – two – three;

Waiting the time I shall discover

20                  Whether the third spake verity.

Ivor Gurney

The Question

I wonder if the old cow died or not?

     Gey bad she was the night I left, and sick.

Dick reckoned she would mend. He knows a lot –

     At least he fancies so himself, does Dick.

Dick knows a lot. But happen I did wrong

     To leave the cow to him and come away.

Over and over like a silly song

     These words keep bumming in my head all day.

And all I think of, as I face the foe

10                  And take my lucky chance of being shot,

Is this – that if I'm hit, I'll never know

     Till Doomsday if the old cow died or not.

Wilfrid Gibson

The Soldier Addresses His Body

I shall be mad if you get smashed about;

We've had good times together, you and I;

Although you groused a bit when luck was out,

And women passionless, and we went dry.

Yet there are many things we have not done;

Countries not seen, where people do strange things;

Eat fish alive, and mimic in the sun

The solemn gestures of their stone-grey kings.

I've heard of forests that are dim at noon

10             Where snakes and creepers wrestle all day long;

Where vivid beasts grow pale with the full moon,

Gibber and cry, and wail a mad old song;

Because at the full moon the Hippogriff,

With crinkled ivory snout and agate feet,

With his green eyes will glare them cold and stiff

For the coward Wyvern to come down and eat.

Vodka and kvass, and bitter mountain wines

We have not drunk, nor snatched at bursting grapes

To pelt slim girls along Sicilian vines

20             Who'd flicker through the leaves, faint frolic shapes.

Yea, there are many things we have not done,

But it's a sweat to knock them into rhyme,

Let's have a drink, and give the cards a run

And leave dull verse to the dull peaceful time.

Edgell Rickword

The Day's March

The battery grides and jingles,

Mile succeeds to mile;

Shaking the noonday sunshine

The guns lunge out awhile,

And then are still awhile.

We amble along the highway;

The reeking, powdery dust

Ascends and cakes our faces

With a striped, sweaty crust.

10             Under the still sky's violet

The heat throbs on the air…

The white road's dusty radiance

Assumes a dark glare.

With a head hot and heavy,

And eyes that cannot rest,

And a black heart burning

In a stifled breast,

I sit in the saddle,

I feel the road unroll,

20             And keep my senses straightened

Toward to-morrow's goal.

There, over unknown meadows

Which we must reach at last,

Day and night thunders

A black and chilly blast.

Heads forget heaviness,

Hearts forget spleen,

For by that mighty winnowing

Being is blown clean.

30             Light in the eyes again,

Strength in the hand,

A spirit dares, dies, forgives,

And can understand!

And, best! Love comes back again

After grief and shame,

And along the wind of death

Throws a clean flame.

                    *

The battery grides and jingles,

Mile succeeds to mile;

40             Suddenly battering the silence

The guns burst out awhile.

                    *

I lift my head and smile.

Robert Nichols

Eve of Assault: Infantry Going Down to Trenches

Downwards slopes the wild red sun.

We lie around a waiting gun;

Soon we shall load and fire and load.

But, hark! a sound beats down the road.

‘'Ello! wot's up?' ‘Let's 'ave a look!'

‘Come on, Ginger, drop that book!'

‘Wot an ‘ell of bloody noise!'

‘It's the Yorks and Lancs, meboys!'

So we crowd: watch them come –

10             One man drubbing on a drum,

A crazy, high mouth-organ blowing,

Tin cans rattling, cat-calls, crowing…

And above their rhythmic feet

A whirl of shrilling loud and sweet,

Round mouths whistling in unison;

Shouts: ‘'O's goin' to out the 'Un?'

‘Back us up, mates!' ‘Gawd, we will!'

‘'Eave them shells at Kaiser Bill!'

‘Art from Lancashire, melad?'

20             ‘Gi' 'en a cheer, boys; make'en glad.'

‘'Ip ‘urrah!' ‘Give Fritz the chuck.'

‘Good ol' bloody Yorks!' ‘Good-luck!'

‘Cheer!'

     I cannot cheer or speak

Lest my voice, my heart must break.

Robert Nichols

Headquarters

A league and a league from the trenches – from the traversed maze of the lines,

Where daylong the sniper watches and daylong the bullet whines,

And the cratered earth is in travail with mines and with countermines –

Here, where haply some woman dreamed, (are those her roses that bloom

In the garden beyond the windows of my littered working room?)

We have decked the map for our masters as a bride is decked for the groom.

Fair, on each lettered numbered square – cross-road and mound and wire,

Loophole, redoubt, and emplacement – lie the targets their mouths desire;

Gay with purples and browns and blues, have we traced them their arcs of fire.

10             And ever the type-keys chatter; and ever our keen wires bring

Word from the watchers a-crouch below, word from the watchers a-wing:

And ever we hear the distant growl of our hid guns thundering.

Hear it hardly, and turn again to our maps, where the trench-lines crawl,

Red on the gray and each with a sign for the ranging shrapnel's fall –

Snakes that our masters shall scotch at dawn, as is written here on the wall.

For the weeks of our waiting draw to a close…There is scarcely a leaf astir

In the garden beyond my windows, where the twilight shadows blurr

The blaze of some woman's roses…

                                             ‘Bombardment orders, sir.'

Gilbert Frankau

Bombardment

The Town has opened to the sun.

Like a flat red lily with a million petals

She unfolds, she comes undone.

A sharp sky brushes upon

The myriad glittering chimney-tips

As she gently exhales to the sun.

Hurrying creatures run

Down the labyrinth of the sinister flower.

What is it they shun?

10             A dark bird falls from the sun.

It curves in a rush to the heart of the vast

Flower: the day has begun.

D. H. Lawrence

The Shell

Shrieking its message the flying death

     Cursed the resisting air,

Then buried its nose by a battered church,

     A skeleton gaunt and bare.

The brains of science, the money of fools

     Had fashioned an iron slave

Destined to kill, yet the futile end

     Was a child's uprooted grave.

H. Smalley Sarson

Bombardment

Four days the earth was rent and torn

By bursting steel,

The houses fell about us;

Three nights we dared not sleep,

Sweating, and listening for the imminent crash

Which meant our death.

The fourth night every man,

Nerve-tortured, racked to exhaustion,

Slept, muttering and twitching,

10             While the shells crashed overhead.

The fifth day there came a hush;

We left our holes

And looked above the wreckage of the earth

To where the white clouds moved in silent lines

Across the untroubled blue.

Richard Aldington

On Somme

Suddenly into the still air burst thudding

And thudding, and cold fear possessed me all,

On the grey slopes there, where winter in sullen brooding

Hung between height and depth of the ugly fall

Of Heaven to earth; and the thudding was illness' own.

But still a hope I kept that were we there going over,

I, in the line, I should not fail, but take recover

From others' courage, and not as coward be known.

No flame we saw, the noise and the dread alone

10             Was battle to us; men were enduring there such

And such things, in wire tangled, to shatters blown.

Courage kept, but ready to vanish at first touch.