The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry (8 page)

Striving each look, each accent, not to miss,

Or question of our parting and our greeting,

Is this the last of all? is this – or this?

Last sight of all it may be with these eyes,

10             Last touch, last hearing, since eyes, hands, and ears,

Even serving love, are our mortalities,

And cling to what they own in mortal fears: –

But oh, let end what will, I hold you fast

By immortal love, which has no first or last.

Eleanor Farjeon

The Kiss

To these I turn, in these I trust;

Brother Lead and Sister Steel.

To his blind power I make appeal;

I guard her beauty clean from rust.

He spins and burns and loves the air,

And splits a skull to win my praise;

But up the nobly marching days

She glitters naked, cold and fair.

Sweet Sister, grant your soldier this;

10             That in good fury he may feel

The body where he sets his heel

Quail from your downward darting kiss.

Siegfried Sassoon

Arms and the Boy

Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade

How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;

Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash;

And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.

Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-heads

Which long to muzzle in the hearts of lads.

Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth,

Sharp with the sharpness of grief and death.

For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple.

10             There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple;

And God will grow no talons at his heels,

Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.

Wilfred Owen

‘
All the hills and vales along
'

All the hills and vales along

Earth is bursting into song,

And the singers are the chaps

Who are going to die perhaps.

        O sing, marching men,

        Till the valleys ring again.

        Give your gladness to earth's keeping,

        So be glad, when you are sleeping.

Cast away regret and rue,

10             Think what you are marching to.

Little live, great pass.

Jesus Christ and Barabbas

Were found the same day.

This died, that went his way.

        So sing with joyful breath,

        For why, you are going to death.

        Teeming earth will surely store

        All the gladness that you pour.

Earth that never doubts nor fears,

20             Earth that knows of death, not tears,

Earth that bore with joyful ease

Hemlock for Socrates,

Earth that blossomed and was glad

‘Neath the cross that Christ had,

Shall rejoice and blossom too

When the bullet reaches you.

        Wherefore, men marching

        On the road to death, sing!

        Pour gladness on earth's head,

30                     So be merry, so be dead.

From the hills and valleys earth

Shouts back the sound of mirth,

Tramp of feet and lilt of song

Ringing all the road along.

All the music of their going,

Ringing swinging glad song-throwing,

Earth will echo still, when foot

Lies numb and voice mute.

        On, marching men, on

40                     To the gates of death with song.

        Sow your gladness for earth's reaping,

        So you may be glad, though sleeping.

        Strew your gladness on earth's bed,

        So be merry, so be dead.

Charles Hamilton Sorley

‘
We are Fred Karno's army
'

We are Fred Karno's army, we are the ragtime infantry.

We cannot fight, we cannot shoot, what bleeding use are we?

And when we get to Berlin we'll hear the Kaiser say,

‘Hoch! Hoch! Mein Gott, what a bloody rotten lot are the ragtime infantry.'

Soldiers' song

Song of the Dark Ages

We digged our trenches on the down

     Beside old barrows, and the wet

White chalk we shovelled from below;

It lay like drifts of thawing snow

     On parados and parapet:

Until a pick neither struck flint

     Nor split the yielding chalky soil,

But only calcined human bone:

Poor relic of that Age of Stone

10                  Whose ossuary was our spoil.

Home we marched singing in the rain,

     And all the while, beneath our song,

I mused how many springs should wane

And still our trenches scar the plain:

     The monument of an old wrong.

But then, I thought, the fair green sod

     Will wholly cover that white stain,

And soften, as it clothes the face

Of those old barrows, every trace

20                  Of violence to the patient plain.

And careless people, passing by

     Will speak of both in casual tone:

Saying: ‘You see the toil they made:

The age of iron, pick and spade,

     Here jostles with the Age of Stone.'

Yet either from that happier race

     Will merit but a passing glance;

And they will leave us both alone:

Poor savages who wrought in stone –

30                  Poor savages who fought in France.

Francis Brett Young

Sonnets 1917: Servitude

If it were not for England, who would bear

This heavy servitude one moment more?

To keep a brothel, sweep and wash the floor

Of filthiest hovels were noble to compare

With this brass-cleaning life. Now here, now there

Harried in foolishness, scanned curiously o'er

By fools made brazen by conceit, and store

Of antique witticisms thin and bare.

Only the love of comrades sweetens all,

10             Whose laughing spirit will not be outdone.

As night-watching men wait for the sun

To hearten them, so wait I on such boys

As neither brass nor Hell-fire may appal,

Nor guns, nor sergeant-major's bluster and noise.

Ivor Gurney

In Barracks

The barrack-square, washed clean with rain,

Shines wet and wintry-grey and cold.

Young Fusiliers, strong-legged and bold,

March and wheel and march again.

The sun looks over the barrack gate,

Warm and white with glaring shine,

To watch the soldiers of the Line

That life has hired to fight with fate.

Fall out: the long parades are done.

10             Up comes the dark; down goes the sun.

The square is walled with windowed light.

Sleep well, you lusty Fusiliers;

Shut your brave eyes on sense and sight,

And banish from your dreamless ears

The bugle's dying notes that say,

‘Another night; another day.'

Siegfried Sassoon

The Last Post

The bugler sent a call of high romance –

‘Lights out! Lights out!' to the deserted square.

On the thin brazen notes he threw a prayer,

‘God, if it's
this
for me next time in France…

O spare the phantom bugle as I lie

Dead in the gas and smoke and roar of guns,

Dead in a row with the other broken ones

Lying so stiff and still under the sky,

Jolly young Fusiliers too good to die.'

Robert Graves

In Training

The wind is cold and heavy

     And storms are in the sky:

Our path across the heather

     Goes higher and more high.

To right, the town we came from,

     To left, blue hills and sea:

The wind is growing colder

     And shivering are we.

We drag with stiffening fingers

10                  Our rifles up the hill.

The path is steep and tangled

     But leads to Flanders still.

Edward Shanks

Youth in Arms II: Soldier

Are you going? To-night we must hear all your laughter;

We shall need to remember it in the quiet days after.

Lift your rough hands, grained like unpolished oak.

Drink, call, lean forward, tell us some happy joke.

Let us know every whim of your brain and innocent soul.

Your speech is let loose; your great loafing words roll

Like hill-waters. But every syllable said

Brings you nearer the time you'll be found lying dead

In a ditch, or rolled stiff on the stones of a plain.

10             (Thought! Thought go back into your kennel again:

Hound, back!) Drink your glass, happy soldier, to-night.

Death is quick; you will laugh as you march to the fight.

We are wrong. Dreaming ever, we falter and pause:

You go forward unharmed without Why or Because.

Spring does not question. The war is like rain;

You will fall in the field like a flower without pain;

And who shall have noticed one sweet flower that dies?

The rain comes; the leaves open, and other flowers rise.

Harold Monro

‘
Men Who March Away
'

(Song of the Soldiers)

What of the faith and fire within us

        Men who march away

        Ere the barn-cocks say

        Night is growing gray,

To hazards whence no tears can win us;

What of the faith and fire within us

        Men who march away!

Is it a purblind prank, O think you,

        Friend with the musing eye

10                     Who watch us stepping by

        With doubt and dolorous sigh?

Can much pondering so hoodwink you?

Is it a purblind prank, O think you,

        Friend with the musing eye?

Nay. We see well what we are doing,

        Though some may not see –

        Dalliers as they be –

        England's need are we;

Her distress would leave us rueing:

20             Nay. We well see what we are doing,

        Though some may not see!

In our heart of hearts believing

        Victory crowns the just,

        And that braggarts must

        Surely bite the dust,

Press we to the field ungrieving,

In our heart of hearts believing

        Victory crowns the just.

Hence the faith and fire within us

30                     Men who march away

        Ere the barn-cocks say

        Night is growing gray,

To hazards whence no tears can win us;

Hence the faith and fire within us

        Men who march away.

Thomas Hardy

Marching Men

Under the level winter sky

I saw a thousand Christs go by.

They sang an idle song and free

As they went up to calvary.

Careless of eye and coarse of lip,

They marched in holiest fellowship.

That heaven might heal the world, they gave

Their earth-born dreams to deck the grave.

With souls unpurged and steadfast breath

10             They supped the sacrament of death.

And for each one, far off, apart,

Seven swords have rent a woman's heart.

Marjorie Pickthall

The Send-off

Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way

To the siding-shed,

And lined the train with faces grimly gay.

Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray

As men's are, dead.

Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp

Stood staring hard,

Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.

Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp

10             Winked to the guard.

So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.

They were not ours:

We never heard to which front these were sent.

Nor there if they yet mock what women meant

Who gave them flowers.

Shall they return to beatings of great bells

In wild trainloads?

A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,

May creep back, silent, to still village wells

20             Up half-known roads.

Wilfred Owen

Fragment

I strayed about the deck, an hour, to-night

Under a cloudy moonless sky; and peeped

In at the windows, watched my friends at table,

Or playing cards, or standing in the doorway,

Or coming out into the darkness. Still

No one could see me.

I would have thought of them

– Heedless, within a week of battle – in pity,

Pride in their strength and in the weight and firmness

And link'd beauty of bodies, and pity that

10             This gay machine of splendour'ld soon be broken,

Thought little of, pashed, scattered…

Only, always,

I could but see them – against the lamplight – pass