The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry (19 page)

     Sure of the sky: sure of the sea to send its healing breeze,

                Sure of the sun. And even as to these

                    Surely the Spring, when God shall please,

                Will come again like a divine surprise

To those who sit to-day with their great Dead, hands in their hands, eyes in their eyes,

At one with Love, at one with Grief: blind to the scattered things and changing skies.

Charlotte Mew

‘
They
'

The Bishop tells us: ‘When the boys come back

They will not be the same; for they'll have fought

In a just cause: they lead the last attack

On Anti-Christ; their comrades' blood has bought

New right to breed an honourable race.

They have challenged Death and dared him face to face.'

‘We're none of us the same!' the boys reply.

‘For George lost both his legs; and Bill's stone blind;

Poor Jim's shot through the lungs and like to die;

10             And Bert's gone siphilitic: you'll not find

A chap who's served that hasn't found
some
change.'

And the Bishop said: ‘The ways of God are strange!'

Siegfried Sassoon

Portrait of a Coward

True he'd have fought to death if the Germans came –

But an hours battering after a days battering

Brought his soul down to quivering, with small shame.

And he was fit to run, if his chance had come.

But Gloucesters of more sterner frame and spirit

Kept him in place without reproach, (sweet blood inherit

From hills and nature) said no word and kept him there.

True, he'd have fought to death, but Laventie's needing

Was a nerve to hide the pain of the soul bleeding –

10             Say nothing, and nothing ever of God to beg.

He hurt more, did fatigues, and was friend to share

What food was not his need; of enemies not heeding.

Everybody was glad – (but determined to hide the bad)

When he took courage at wiremending and shot his leg,

And got to Blighty, no man saying word of denying.

Ivor Gurney

In A Soldiers' Hospital I: Pluck

Crippled for life at seventeen,

     His great eyes seem to question why:

With both legs smashed it might have been

     Better in that grim trench to die

     Than drag maimed years out helplessly.

A child – so wasted and so white,

     He told a lie to get his way,

To march, a man with men, and fight

     While other boys are still at play.

10                  A gallant lie your heart will say.

So broke with pain, he shrinks in dread

     To see the ‘dresser' drawing near;

And winds the clothes about his head

     That none may see his heart-sick fear.

     His shaking, strangled sobs you hear.

But when the dreaded moment's there

     He'll face us all, a soldier yet,

Watch his bared wounds with unmoved air,

     (Though tell-tale lashes still are wet,)

20                  And smoke his woodbine cigarette.

Eva Dobell

In A Soldiers' Hospital II: Gramophone Tunes

Through the long ward the gramophone

     Grinds out its nasal melodies:

‘Where did you get that girl?' it shrills.

     The patients listen at their ease,

Through clouds of strong tobacco-smoke:

     The gramophone can always please.

The Welsh boy has it by his bed,

     (He's lame – one leg was blown away.)

He'll lie propped up with pillows there,

10                  And wind the handle half the day.

His neighbour, with the shattered arm,

     Picks out the records he must play.

Jock with his crutches beats the time;

     The gunner, with his head close-bound,

Listens with puzzled, patient smile:

     (Shell-shock – he cannot hear a sound.)

The others join in from their beds,

     And send the chorus rolling round.

Somehow for me these common tunes

20                  Can never sound the same again:

They've magic now to thrill my heart

     And bring before me, clear and plain,

Man that is master of his flesh,

     And has the laugh of death and pain.

Eva Dobell

Hospital Sanctuary

When you have lost your all in a world's upheaval,

Suffered and prayed, and found your prayers were vain,

When love is dead, and hope has no renewal –

These need you still; come back to them again.

When the sad days bring you the loss of all ambition,

And pride is gone that gave you strength to bear,

When dreams are shattered, and broken is all decision –

Turn you to these, dependent on your care.

They too have fathomed the depths of human anguish,

10             Seen all that counted flung like chaff away;

The dim abodes of pain wherein they languish

Offer that peace for which at last you pray.

Vera Brittain

Convalescence

From out the dragging vastness of the sea,

     Wave-fettered, bound in sinuous, seaweed strands,

     He toils toward the rounding beach, and stands

One moment, white and dripping, silently,

Cut like a cameo in lazuli,

     Then falls, betrayed by shifting shells, and lands

     Prone in the jeering water, and his hands

Clutch for support where no support can be.

     So up, and down, and forward, inch by inch,

10             He gains upon the shore, where poppies glow

And sandflies dance their little lives away.

     The sucking waves retard, and tighter clinch

The weeds about him, but the land-winds blow,

And in the sky there blooms the sun of May.

Amy Lowell

Smile, Smile, Smile

Head to limp head, the sunk-eyed wounded scanned

Yesterday's Mail; the casualties (typed small)

And (large) Vast Booty from our Latest Haul.

Also, they read of Cheap Homes, not yet planned;

For, said the paper, ‘When this war is done

The men's first instinct will be making homes.

Meanwhile their foremost need is aerodromes,

It being certain war has just begun.

Peace would do wrong to our undying dead, –

10             The sons we offered might regret they died

If we got nothing lasting in their stead.

We must be solidly indemnified.

Though all be worthy Victory which all bought,

We rulers sitting in this ancient spot

Would wrong our very selves if we forgot

The greatest glory will be theirs who fought,

Who kept this nation in integrity.'

Nation? – The half-limbed readers did not chafe

But smiled at one another curiously

20             Like secret men who know their secret safe.

This is the thing they know and never speak,

That England one by one had fled to France

(Not many elsewhere now save under France).

Pictures of these broad smiles appear each week,

And people in whose voice real feeling rings

Say: How they smile! They're happy now, poor things.

Wilfred Owen

The Beau Ideal

Since Rose a classic taste possessed,

     It naturally follows

Her girlish fancy was obsessed

     With Belvidere Apollos.

And when she dreamed about a mate,

     If any hoped to suit, he

Must in his person illustrate

     A type of manly beauty.

He must be physically fit,

10                  A graceful, stalwart figure,

Of iron and elastic knit

     And full of verve and vigour.

Enough! I've made the bias plain

     That warped her heart and thrilled it.

It was a maggot of her brain,

     And Germany has killed it.

To-day, the sound in wind and limb

     Don't flutter Rose one tittle.

Her maiden ardour cleaves to him

     Who's proved that he is brittle, 20

Whose healing cicatrices show

     The colours of a prism,

Whose back is bent into a bow

     By Flanders rheumatism.

The lad who troth with Rose would plight,

     Nor apprehend rejection,

Must be in shabby khaki dight

     To compass her affection.

Who buys her an engagement ring

30                  And finds her kind and kissing,

Must have one member in a sling

     Or, preferably, missing.

Jessie Pope

The Veteran

We came upon him sitting in the sun,

     Blinded by war, and left. And past the fence

There came young soldiers from the
Hand and Flower
,

     Asking advice of his experience.

And he said this, and that, and told them tales,

     And all the nightmares of each empty head

Blew into air; then, hearing us beside,

     ‘Poor chaps, how'd they know what it's like?' he said.

We stood there, and watched him as he sat,

10                  Turning his sockets where they went away,

Until it came to one of us to ask

     ‘And you're – how old?'

          ‘Nineteen, the third of May.'

Margaret Postgate Cole

Repression of War Experience

Now light the candles; one; two; there's a moth;

What silly beggars they are to blunder in

And scorch their wings with glory, liquid flame –

No, no, not that, – it's bad to think of war,

When thoughts you've gagged all day come back to scare you;

And it's been proved that soldiers don't go mad

Unless they lose control of ugly thoughts

That drive them out to jabber among the trees.

Now light your pipe; look, what a steady hand.

10             Draw a deep breath; stop thinking; count fifteen,

And you're as right as rain…

                                          Why won't it rain?…

I wish there'd be a thunder-storm to-night,

With bucketsful of water to sluice the dark,

And make the roses hang their dripping heads.

Books; what a jolly company they are,

Standing so quiet and patient on their shelves,

Dressed in dim brown, and black, and white, and green,

And every kind of colour. Which will you read?

20             Come on; O
do
read something; they're so wise.

I tell you all the wisdom of the world

Is waiting for you on those shelves; and yet

You sit and gnaw your nails, and let your pipe out,

And listen to the silence: on the ceiling

There's one big, dizzy moth that bumps and flutters;

And in the breathless air outside the house

The garden waits for something that delays.

There must be crowds of ghosts among the trees, –

Not people killed in battle, – they're in France, –

30             But horrible shapes in shrouds – old men who died

Slow, natural deaths, – old men with ugly souls,

Who wore their bodies out with nasty sins.

                                                            *

You're quiet and peaceful, summering safe at home;

You'd never think there was a bloody war on!…

O yes, you would…why, you can hear the guns.

Hark! Thud, thud, thud, – quite soft…they never cease –

Those whispering guns – O Christ, I want to go out

And screech at them to stop – I'm going crazy;

I'm going stark, staring mad because of the guns.

Siegfried Sassoon

A Child's Nightmare

Through long nursery nights he stood

By my bed unwearying,

Loomed gigantic, formless, queer,

Purring in my haunted ear

That same hideous nightmare thing,

Talking, as he lapped my blood,

In a voice cruel and flat,

Saying for ever, ‘Cat!…Cat!…Cat!…'

That one word was all he said,

10             That one word through all my sleep,

In monotonous mock despair.

Nonsense may be light as air,

But there's Nonsense that can keep

Horror bristling round the head,

When a voice cruel and flat

Says for ever, ‘Cat!…Cat!…Cat!…'

He had faded, he was gone

Years ago with Nursery Land,

When he leapt on me again

20             From the clank of a night train,

Overpowered me foot and head,

Lapped my blood, while on and on

The old voice cruel and flat

Purred for ever, ‘Cat!…Cat!…Cat!…'

Morphia drowsed, again I lay

In a crater by High Wood:

He was there with straddling legs,

Staring eyes as big as eggs,

Purring as he lapped my blood,