The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry (10 page)

It was past twelve on a mid-winter night,

When peaceful folk in beds lay snug asleep:

There, with much work to do before the light,

We lugged our clay-sucked boots as best we might

Along the trench; sometimes a bullet sang,

And droning shells burst with a hollow bang;

We were soaked, chilled and wretched, every one.

Darkness: the distant wink of a huge gun.

10             I turned in the black ditch, loathing the storm;

A rocket fizzed and burned with blanching flare,

And lit the face of what had been a form

Floundering in mirk. He stood before me there;

I say that he was Christ; stiff in the glare,

And leaning forward from his burdening task,

Both arms supporting it; his eyes on mine

Stared from the woeful head that seemed a mask

Of mortal pain in Hell's unholy shrine.

No thorny crown, only a woollen cap

20             He wore – an English soldier, white and strong,

Who loved his time like any simple chap,

Good days of work and sport and homely song;

Now he has learned that nights are very long,

And dawn a watching of the windowed sky.

But to the end, unjudging, he'll endure

Horror and pain, not uncontent to die

That Lancaster on Lune may stand secure.

He faced me, reeling in his weariness,

Shouldering his load of planks, so hard to bear.

30             I say that he was Christ, who wrought to bless

All groping things with freedom bright as air,

And with His mercy washed and made them fair.

Then the flame sank, and all grew black as pitch,

While we began to struggle along the ditch;

And someone flung his burden in the muck,

Mumbling: ‘O Christ Almighty, now I'm stuck!‘

Siegfried Sassoon

Serenade

It was after the Somme, our line was quieter,

Wires mended, neither side daring attacker

Or aggressor to be – the guns equal, the wires a thick hedge,

Where there sounded, (O past days for ever confounded!)

The tune of Schubert which belonged to days mathematical,

Effort of spirit bearing fruit worthy, actual.

The gramophone for an hour was my quiet's mocker,

Until I cried, ‘Give us “Heldenleben', “Heldenleben'.‘

The Gloucesters cried out ‘Strauss is our favourite wir haben

10             Sich geliebt‘. So silence fell, Aubers front slept,

And the sentries an unsentimental silence kept.

True, the size of the rum ration was still a shocker

But at last over Aubers the majesty of the dawn's veil swept.

Ivor Gurney

Returning, We Hear The Larks

Sombre the night is:

And though we have our lives, we know

What sinister threat lurks there.

Dragging these anguished limbs, we only know

This poison-blasted track opens on our camp –

On a little safe sleep.

But hark! Joy – joy – strange joy.

Lo! Heights of night ringing with unseen larks:

Music showering our upturned listening faces.

10             Death could drop from the dark

As easily as song –

But song only dropped,

Like a blind man's dreams on the sand

By dangerous tides;

Like a girl's dark hair, for she dreams no ruin lies there,

Or her kisses where a serpent hides.

Isaac Rosenberg

After War

One got peace of heart at last, the dark march over,

And the straps slipped, the body felt under roof's low cover,

Lying slack the body, let sink in straw giving;

And some sweetness, a great sweetness felt in mere living,

And to come to this, haven after sorefooted weeks,

The dark barn roof, and the glows and the wedges and streaks,

Letters from home, dry warmth and still sure rest taken

Sweet to the chilled frame, nerves soothed were so sore shaken.

Ivor Gurney

Grotesque

These are the damned circles Dante trod,

Terrible in hopelessness,

But even skulls have their humour,

An eyeless and sardonic mockery:

And we,

Sitting with streaming eyes in the acrid smoke,

That murks our foul, damp billet,

Chant bitterly, with raucous voices

As a choir of frogs

10             In hideous irony, our patriotic songs.

Frederic Manning

Louse Hunting

Nudes, stark and glistening,

Yelling in lurid glee. Grinning faces

And raging limbs

Whirl over the floor one fire.

For a shirt verminously busy

Yon soldier tore from his throat,

With oaths

Godhead might shrink at, but not the lice,

And soon the shirt was aflare

10             Over the candle he'd lit while we lay.

Then we all sprang up and stript

To hunt the verminous brood.

Soon like a demons' pantomine

This plunge was raging.

See the silhouettes agape,

See the gibbering shadows

Mixed with the baffled arms on the wall.

See Gargantuan hooked fingers

Pluck in supreme flesh

20             To smutch supreme littleness.

See the merry limbs in that Highland fling

Because some wizard vermin willed

To charm from the quiet this revel

When our ears were half lulled

By the dark music

Blown from Sleep's trumpet.

Isaac Rosenberg

At Senlis Once

O how comely it was and how reviving

When with clay and with death no longer striving

     Down firm roads we came to houses

     With women chattering and green grass thriving.

Now though rains in a cataract descended,

We could glow, with our tribulation ended –

     Count not days, the present only

     Was thought of, how could it ever be expended?

Clad so cleanly, this remnant of poor wretches

10             Picked up life like the hens in orchard ditches,

     Gazed on the mill-sails, heard the church-bell,

     Found an honest glass all manner of riches.

How they crowded the barn with lusty laughter,

Hailed the pierrots and shook each shadowy rafter,

     Even could ridicule their own sufferings,

     Sang as though nothing but joy came after!

Edmund Blunden

Crucifix Corner

There was a water dump there, and regimental

Carts came every day to line up and fill full

Those rolling tanks with chlorinated clear mixture;

And curse the mud with vain veritable vexture.

Aveluy across the valley, billets, shacks, ruins,

With time and time a crump there to mark doings.

On New Year's Eve the marsh glowed tremulous

With rosy mist still holding late marvellous

Sun-glow, the air smelt home; the time breathed home.

10             Noel not put away; new term not yet come,

All things said ‘Severn', the air was full of those calm meadows;

Transport rattled somewhere in the southern shadows;

Stars that were not strange ruled the most quiet high

Arch of soft sky, starred and most grave to see, most high.

What should break that but gun-noise or last Trump?

But neither came. At sudden, with light jump

Clarinet sang into ‘Hundred Pipers and A',

Aveluy's Scottish answered with pipers' true call

‘Happy we've been a'together.' When nothing

20             Stayed of war-weariness or winter's loathing,

Crackers with Christmas stockings hung in the heavens,

Gladness split discipline in sixes and sevens,

Hunger ebb'd magically mixed with strange leavens;

Forgotten, forgotten the hard time's true clothing,

And stars were happy to see Man making Fate plaything.

Ivor Gurney

Vlamertinghe: Passing the Chateau, July, 1917

‘And all her silken flanks with garlands drest' –

But we are coming to the sacrifice.

Must those have flowers who are not yet gone West?

May those have flowers who live with death and lice?

This must be the floweriest place

That earth allows; the queenly face

Of the proud mansion borrows grace for grace

Spite of those brute guns lowing at the skies.

Bold great daisies' golden lights,

10             Bubbling roses' pinks and whites –

Such a gay carpet! poppies by the million;

Such damask! such vermilion!

But if you ask me, mate, the choice of colour

Is scarcely right; this red should have been duller.

Edmund Blunden

Dead Cow Farm

An ancient saga tells us how

In the beginning the First Cow

(For nothing living yet had birth

But Elemental Cow on earth)

Began to lick cold stones and mud:

Under her warm tongue flesh and blood

Blossomed, a miracle to believe:

And so was Adam born, and Eve.

Here now is chaos once again,

10             Primeval mud, cold stones and rain.

Here flesh decays and blood drips red,

And the Cow's dead, the old Cow's dead.

Robert Graves

The Sower

(Eastern France)

Familiar, year by year, to the creaking wain

Is the long road's level ridge above the plain.

To-day a battery comes with horses and guns

On the straight road, that under the poplars runs,

At leisurely pace, the guns with mouths declined,

Harness merrily ringing, and dust behind.

Makers of widows, makers of orphans, they

Pass to their burial business, alert and gay.

But down in the field, where sun has the furrow dried,

10             Is a man who walks in the furrow with even stride.

At every step, with elbow jerked across,

He scatters seed in a quick, deliberate toss,

The immemorial gesture of Man confiding

To Earth, that restores tenfold in a season's gliding.

He is grave and patient, sowing his children's bread:

He treads the kindly furrow, nor turns his head.

Laurence Binyon

August, 1918

(In a French Village)

I hear the tinkling of the cattle bell,

In the broad stillness of the afternoon;

High in the cloudless haze the harvest moon

Is pallid as the phantom of a shell.

A girl is drawing water from a well,

I hear the clatter of her wooden shoon;

Two mothers to their sleeping babies croon;

And the hot village feels the drowsy spell.

Sleep, child, the Angel of Death his wings has spread;

10             His engines scour the land, the sea, the sky;

And all the weapons of Hell's armoury

Are ready for the blood that is their bread;

And many a thousand men to-night must die;

So many that they will not count the Dead.

Maurice Baring

‘
Therefore is the name of it called Babel
'

And still we stood and stared far down

Into that ember-glowing town,

Which every shaft and shock of fate

Had shorn unto its base. Too late

     Came carelessly Serenity.

Now torn and broken houses gaze

On to the rat-infested maze

That once sent up rose-silver haze

     To mingle through eternity.

10             The outlines, once so strongly wrought,

Of city walls, are now a thought

Or jest unto the dead who fought…

     Foundation for futurity.

The shimmering sands where once there played

Children with painted pail and spade

Are drearily desolate – afraid

     To meet night's dark humanity,

Whose silver cool remakes the dead,

And lays no blame on any head

20             For all the havoc, fire, and lead,

     That fell upon us suddenly,

When all we came to know as good

Gave way to Evil's fiery flood,

And monstrous myths of iron and blood

     Seem to obscure God's clarity.

Deep sunk in sin, this tragic star

Sinks deeper still, and wages war

Against itself; strewn all the seas

With victims of a world disease

30             – and we are left to drink the lees

Of Babel's direful prophecy.

Osbert Sitwell

War

Where war has left its wake of whitened bone,

Soft stems of summer grass shall wave again,

And all the blood that war has ever strewn

                              Is but a passing stain.

Lesley Coulson

Canadians

We marched, and saw a company of Canadians

Their coats weighed eighty pounds at least, we saw them

Faces infinitely grimed in, with almost dead hands

Bent, slouching downwards to billets comfortless and dim.

Cave dwellers last of tribes they seemed, and a pity

Even from us just relieved (much as they were), left us.

Lord, what a land of desolation, what iniquity

Of mere being, there of what youth that country bereft us;

Plagues of evil lay in Death's Valley we also had