The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry (14 page)

Fear, but just held. Poets were luckier once

In the hot fray swallowed and some magnificence.

Ivor Gurney

Before the Charge

The night is still and the air is keen,

     Tense with menace the time crawls by,

In front is the town and its homes are seen,

     Blurred in outline against the sky.

The dead leaves float in the sighing air,

     The darkness moves like a curtain drawn,

A veil which the morning sun will tear

     From the face of death. – We charge at dawn.

Patrick MacGill

It's a Queer Time

It's hard to know if you're alive or dead

When steel and fire go roaring through your head.

One moment you'll be crouching at your gun

Traversing, mowing heaps down half in fun:

The next, you choke and clutch at your right breast –

No time to think – leave all – and off you go…

To Treasure Island where the Spice winds blow,

To lovely groves of mango, quince and lime –

Breathe no goodbye, but ho, for the Red West!

10                       It's a queer time.

You're charging madly at them yelling ‘Fag!'

When somehow something gives and your feet drag.

You fall and strike your head; yet feel no pain

And find…You're digging tunnels through the hay

In the Big Barn, ‘cause it's a rainy day.

Oh springy hay, and lovely beams to climb!

You're back in the old sailor suit again.

          It's a queer time.

Or you'll be dozing safe in your dug-out –

20             A great roar – the trench shakes and falls about –

You're struggling, gasping, struggling, then…hullo!

Elsie comes tripping gaily down the trench,

Hanky to nose – that lyddite makes a stench –

Getting her pinafore all over grime.

Funny! because she died ten years ago!

          It's a queer time.

The trouble is, things happen much too quick;

Up jump the Bosches, rifles thump and click,

You stagger, and the whole scene fades away:

30             Even good Christians don't like passing straight

From Tipperary or their Hymn of Hate

To Alleluiah-chanting, and the chime

Of golden harps…and…I'm not well today…

          It's a queer time.

Robert Graves

The Face

Out of the smoke of men's wrath,

The red mist of anger,

Suddenly,

As a wraith of sleep,

A boy's face, white and tense,

Convulsed with terror and hate,

The lips trembling…

Then a red smear, falling…

I thrust aside the cloud, as it were tangible,

10             Blinded with a mist of blood.

The face cometh again

As a wraith of sleep:

A boy's face delicate and blonde,

The very mask of God,

Broken.

Frederic Manning

Gethsemane

The Garden called Gethsemane

     In Picardy it was,

And there the people came to see

     The English soldiers pass.

We used to pass – we used to pass

     Or halt, as it might be,

And ship our masks in case of gas

     Beyond Gethsemane.

The Garden called Gethsemane,

10                  It held a pretty lass,

But all the time she talked to me

     I prayed my cup might pass.

The officer sat on the chair,

     The men lay on the grass,

And all the time we halted there

     I prayed my cup might pass –

It didn't pass – it didn't pass –

     It didn't pass from me.

I drank it when we met the gas

20                Beyond Gethsemane.

Rudyard Kipling

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

     Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

     Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells,

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

10                  Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

     The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Wilfred Owen

The Navigators

I saw the bodies of earth's men

     Like wharves thrust in the stream of time

     Whereon cramped navigators climb

And free themselves in the warm sun:

With outflung arms and shouts of joy

     Those spirits tramped their human planks;

     Then pressing close, reforming ranks,

They pushed off in the stream again:

Cold darkly rotting lay the wharves,

10                  Decaying in the stream of time;

     Slow winding silver tracks of slime

Showed bright where came back none.

W. J. Turner

Spring Offensive

Halted against the shade of a last hill,

They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease

And, finding comfortable chests and knees

Carelessly slept. But many there stood still

To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,

Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.

Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled

By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge,

For though the summer oozed into their veins

10             Like the injected drug for their bones' pains,

Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass,

Fearfully flashed the sky's mysterious glass.

Hour after hour they ponder the warm field –

And the far valley behind, where the buttercups

Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming up,

Where even the little brambles would not yield,

But clutched and clung to them like sorrowing hands;

They breathe like trees unstirred.

Till like a cold gust thrilled the little word

20             At which each body and its soul begird

And tighten them for battle. No alarms

Of bugles, no high flags, no clamorous haste –

Only a lift and flare of eyes that faced

The sun, like a friend with whom their love is done.

O larger shone that smile against the sun, –

Mightier than his whose bounty these have spurned.

So, soon they topped the hill, and raced together

Over an open stretch of herb and heather

Exposed. And instantly the whole sky burned

30             With fury against them; and soft sudden cups

Opened in thousands for their blood; and the green slopes

Chasmed and steepened sheer to infinite space.

Of them who running on that last high place

Leapt to swift unseen bullets, or went up

On the hot blast and fury of hell's upsurge,

Or plunged and fell away past this world's verge,

Some say God caught them even before they fell.

But what say such as from existence' brink

Ventured but drave too swift to sink.

40             The few who rushed in the body to enter hell,

And there out-fiending all its fiends and flames

With superhuman inhumanities,

Long-famous glories, immemorial shames –

And crawling slowly back, have by degrees

Regained cool peaceful air in wonder –

Why speak they not of comrades that went under?

Wilfred Owen

Counter-Attack

We'd gained our first objective hours before

While dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes,

Pallid, unshaved and thirsty, blind with smoke.

Things seemed all right at first. We held their line,

With bombers posted, Lewis guns well placed,

And clink of shovels deepening the shallow trench.

        The place was rotten with dead; green clumsy legs

        High-booted, sprawled and grovelled along the saps;

        And trunks, face downward, in the sucking mud,

10                     Wallowed like trodden sand-bags loosely filled;

        And naked sodden buttocks, mats of hair,

        Bulged, clotted heads slept in the plastering slime.

        And then the rain began, – the jolly old rain!

A yawning soldier knelt against the bank,

Staring across the morning blear with fog;

He wondered when the Allemands would get busy;

And then, of course, they started with five-nines

Traversing, sure as fate, and never a dud.

Mute in the clamour of shells he watched them burst

20             Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell,

While posturing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke.

He crouched and flinched, dizzy with galloping fear,

Sick for escape, – loathing the strangled horror

And butchered, frantic gestures of the dead.

An officer came blundering down the trench:

‘Stand-to and man the fire-step!' On he went…

Gasping and bawling, ‘Fire-step…counter-attack!'

        Then the haze lifted. Bombing on the right

        Down the old sap: machine-guns on the left;

30                     And stumbling figures looming out in front.

        ‘O Christ, they're coming at us!' Bullets spat,

And he remembered his rifle…rapid fire…

And started blazing wildly…then a bang

Crumpled and spun him sideways, knocked him out

To grunt and wriggle: none heeded him; he choked

And fought the flapping veils of smothering gloom,

Lost in a blurred confusion of yells and groans…

Down, and down, and down, he sank and drowned,

Bleeding to death. The counter-attack had failed.

Siegfried Sassoon

Youth in Arms III: Retreat

That is not war – oh it hurts! I am lame.

A thorn is burning me.

We are going back to the place from which we came.

I remember the old song now: –

                Soldier, soldier, going to war,

                When will you come back?

Mind that rut. It is very deep.

All these ways are parched and raw.

Where are we going? How we creep!

10             Are you there? I never saw –

Damn this jingle in my brain.

I'm full of old songs – Have you ever heard this?

                All the roads to victory

                Are flooded as we go.

                There's so much blood to paddle through,

                That's why we're marching slow.

Yes sir; I'm here. Are you an officer?

I can't see. Are we running away?

How long have we done it? One whole year,

20             A month, a week, or since yesterday?

Damn the jingle! My brain

Is scragged and banged –

                
Fellows, these are happy times;

                
Tramp and tramp with open eyes.

                
Yet, try however much you will,

                
You cannot see a tree, a hill,

                
Moon, stars or even skies.

I won't be quiet. Sing too, you fool.

I had a dog I used to beat.

30             Don't try it on me. Say that again.

Who said it?
Halt!
Why? Who can halt?

We're marching now. Who fired? Well. Well.

I'll lie down too. I'm tired enough.

Harold Monro

Back to Rest

A leaping wind from England,

     The skies without a stain,

Clean cut against the morning

     Slim poplars after rain,

The foolish noise of sparrows

     And starlings in a wood –

After the grime of battle

     We know that these are good.

Death whining down from Heaven,

10                  Death roaring from the ground,

Death stinking in the nostril,

     Death shrill in every sound,

Doubting we charged and conquered –

     Hopeless we struck and stood.

Now when the fight is ended

     We know that it was good.

We that have seen the strongest

     Cry like a beaten child,

The sanest eyes unholy,

20                  The cleanest hands defiled,

We that have known the heart blood

     Less than the lees of wine,

We that have seen men broken,

     We know man is divine.

W. N. Hodgson

Dulce et Decorum est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,