The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry (16 page)

     There's none of these so lonely and poor of old,

     But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.

These laid the world away; poured out the red

Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be

     Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,

     That men call age; and those who would have been,

Their sons, they gave, their immortality.

Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth,

10                  Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain.

Honour has come back, as a king, to earth,

     And paid his subjects with a royal wage;

And Nobleness walks in our ways again;

     And we have come into our heritage.

Rupert Brooke

1914: The Dead

These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,

     Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.

The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,

     And sunset, and the colours of the earth.

These had seen movement, and heard music; known

     Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;

Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;

     Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.

There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter

10             And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,

     Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance

And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white

     Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,

A width, a shining peace, under the night.

Rupert Brooke

‘
When you see millions of the mouthless dead
'

When you see millions of the mouthless dead

Across your dreams in pale battalions go,

Say not soft things as other men have said,

That you'll remember. For you need not so.

Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know

It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?

Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.

Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.

Say only this, ‘They are dead.' Then add thereto,

10             ‘Yet many a better one has died before.'

Then, scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should you

Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,

It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.

Great death has made all his for evermore.

Charles Hamilton Sorley

Strange Meeting

It seemed that out of the battle I escaped

Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped

Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,

Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.

Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared

With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,

Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.

And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall;

10             With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;

Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,

And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.

‘Strange, friend,' I said, ‘Here is no cause to mourn.'

‘None,' said the other, ‘Save the undone years,

The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,

Was my life also; I went hunting wild

After the wildest beauty in the world,

Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,

But mocks the steady running of the hour,

20             And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.

For by my glee might many men have laughed,

And of my weeping something has been left,

Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,

The pity of war, the pity war distilled.

Now men will go content with what we spoiled.

Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.

They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,

None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.

Courage was mine, and I had mystery;

30             Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;

To miss the march of this retreating world

Into vain citadels that are not walled.

Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels

I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,

Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.

I would have poured my spirit without stint

But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.

Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

40             I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned

Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.

I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.

Let us sleep now…'

Wilfred Owen

Prisoners

Comrades of risk and rigour long ago

Who have done battle under honour's name,

Hoped (living or shot down) some meed of fame,

And wooed bright Danger for a thrilling kiss, –

Laugh, oh laugh well, that we have come to this!

Laugh, oh laugh loud, all ye who long ago

Adventure found in gallant company!

Safe in Stagnation, laugh, laugh bitterly,

While on this filthiest backwater of Time's flow

10             Drift we and rot, till something sets us free!

Laugh like old men with senses atrophied,

Heeding no Present, to the Future dead,

Nodding quite foolish by the warm fireside

And seeing no flame, but only in the red

And flickering embers, pictures of the past: –

Life like a cinder fading black at last.

F. W. Harvey

His Mate

‘Hi-diddle-diddle

The cat and the fiddle‘…

I raised my head,

And saw him seated on a heap of dead,

Yelling the nursery-tune,

Grimacing at the moon…

‘And the cow jumped over the moon.

The little dog laughed to see such sport

And the dish ran away with the spoon.'

10             And, as he stopt to snigger,

I struggled to my knees and pulled the trigger.

Wilfrid Gibson

Epitaphs: The Coward

I could not look on Death, which being known,

Men led me to him, blindfold and alone.

Rudyard Kipling

The Deserter

‘I'm sorry I done it, Major.'

We bandaged the livid face;

And led him, ere the wan sun rose,

To die his death of disgrace.

The bolt-heads locked to the cartridge;

The rifles steadied to rest,

As cold stock nestled at colder cheek

And foresight lined on the breast.

‘
Fire!
' called the Sergeant-Major.

10             The muzzles flamed as he spoke:

And the shameless soul of a nameless man

Went up in the cordite-smoke.

Gilbert Frankau

My Boy Jack

‘Have you news of my boy Jack?'

     
Not this tide.

‘When d'you think that he'll come back?'

     
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

‘Has any one else had word of him?'

     
Not this tide.

For what is sunk will hardly swim,

     
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

‘Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?'

10                  
None this tide,

     
Nor any tide,

Except he did not shame his kind
–

     
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,

     
This tide,

     
And every tide;

Because he was the son you bore,

     
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!

Rudyard Kipling

Easter Monday

In the last letter that I had from France

You thanked me for the silver Easter egg

Which I had hidden in the box of apples

You liked to munch beyond all other fruit.

You found the egg the Monday before Easter,

And said, ‘I will praise Easter Monday now –

It was such a lovely morning.' Then you spoke

Of the coming battle and said, ‘This is the eve.

‘Good-bye. And may I have a letter soon'.

10             That Easter Monday was a day for praise,

It was such a lovely morning. In our garden

We sowed our earliest seeds, and in the orchard

The apple-bud was ripe. It was the eve.

There are three letters that you will not get.

Eleanor Farjeon

‘
I want to go home
'

I want to go home,

I want to go home.

I don't want to go in the trenches no more,

Where the whizz-bangs and shrapnel they whistle and roar.

Take me over the sea,

Where the Alleyman can't get at me.

Oh my, I don't want to die,

I want to go home.

I want to go home,

10             I want to go home.

I don't want to visit la Belle France no more,

For oh the Jack Johnsons they make such a roar.

Take me over the sea,

Where the snipers they can't get at me.

Oh my, I don't want to die, I want to go home.

Soldiers' song

If We Return

(Rondeau)

If we return, will England be

Just England still to you and me?

The place where we must earn our bread?

We, who have walked among the dead.

     And watched the smile of agony,

     And seen the price of Liberty,

     Which we have taken carelessly

     From other hands. Nay, we shall dread,

                                          If we return,

10                  Dread lest we hold blood-guiltily

     The things that men have died to free.

     Oh, English fields shall blossom red

     For all the blood that has been shed

     By men whose guardians are we,

                                          If we return.

F. W. Harvey

Blighty

It seemed that it were well to kiss first earth

On landing, having traversed the narrow seas,

And grasp so little, tenderly, of this field of birth.

France having trodden and lain on, travelled bending the knees.

And having shed blood, known heart for her and last nerve freeze,

Proved body past heart, and soul past (so we thought) any worth.

For what so dear a thing as the first homecoming,

The seeing smoke pillar aloft from the home dwellings;

Sign of travel ended, lifted awhile the dooming

10             Sentence of exile; homecoming, right of tale-tellings?

But mud is on our fate after so long acquaintance,

We find of England the first gate without Romance;

Blue paved wharfs with dock-policemen and civic decency,

Trains and restrictions, order and politeness and directions,

Motion by black and white, guided ever about-ways

And staleness with petrol-dust distinguishing days.

A grim faced black-garbed mother efficient and busy

Set upon housework, worn-minded and fantasy free –

A work-house matron, forgetting her old birth friend – the sea.

Ivor Gurney

War Girls

There's the girl who clips your ticket for the train,

     And the girl who speeds the lift from floor to floor,

There's the girl who does a milk-round in the rain,

     And the girl who calls for orders at your door.

                   Strong, sensible, and fit,

                   They're out to show their grit,

     And tackle jobs with energy and knack.

                   No longer caged and penned up,

                   They're going to keep their end up

10                       Till the khaki soldier boys come marching back.

There's the motor girl who drives a heavy van,

     There's the butcher girl who brings your joint of meat,

There's the girl who cries ‘All fares, please!' like a man,

     And the girl who whistles taxis up the street.

                   Beneath each uniform

                   Beats a heart that's soft and warm,

Though of canny mother-wit they show no lack;

                   But a solemn statement this is,

                   They've no time for love and kisses

20                       Till the khaki soldier boys come marching back.

Jessie Pope

Home Service

‘At least it wasn't your fault' I hear them console

When they come back, the few that will come back.

I feel those handshakes now. ‘Well, on the whole

You didn't miss much. I wish I had your knack

Of stopping out. You can still call your soul

Your own, at any rate. What a priceless slack

You've had, old chap. It must have been top-hole.