That dance and batten. Though God die
Mad from the horror of the light –
The light is mad, too, flecked with blood, –
We dance, we dance, each night.
Edith Sitwell
Epitaphs: A Son
My son was killed while laughing at some jest. I would I knew
What it was, and it might serve me in a time when jests are few.
Rudyard Kipling
‘I looked up from my writing’
I looked up from my writing,
And gave a start to see,
As if rapt in my inditing,
The moon’s full gaze on me.
Her meditative misty head
Was spectral in its air,
And I involuntarily said,
‘What are you doing there?’
‘Oh, I’ve been scanning pond and hole
10 And waterway hereabout
For the body of one with a sunken soul
Who has put his life-light out.
‘Did you hear his frenzied tattle?
It was sorrow for his son
Who is slain in brutish battle,
Though he has injured none.
‘And now I am curious to look
Into the blinkered mind
Of one who wants to write a book
20 In a world of such a kind.’
Her temper overwrought me,
And I edged to shun her view,
For I felt assured she thought me
One who should drown him too.
Thomas Hardy
Picnic
July 1917
We lay and ate sweet hurt-berries
In the bracken of Hurt Wood.
Like a quire of singers singing low
The dark pines stood.
Behind us climbed the Surrey hills,
Wild, wild in greenery;
At our feet the downs of Sussex broke
To an unseen sea.
And life was bound in a still ring,
10 Drowsy, and quiet, and sweet…
When heavily up the south-east wind
The great guns beat.
We did not wince, we did not weep,
We did not curse or pray;
We drowsily heard, and someone said,
‘They sound clear to-day’.
We did not shake with pity and pain,
Or sicken and blanch white.
We said, ‘If the wind’s from over there
20 There’ll be rain to-night’.
*
Once pity we knew, and rage we knew,
And pain we knew, too well,
As we stared and peered dizzily
Through the gates of hell.
But now hell’s gates are an old tale;
Remote the anguish seems;
The guns are muffled and far away,
Dreams within dreams.
And far and far are Flanders mud,
30 And the pain of Picardy;
And the blood that runs there runs beyond
The wide waste sea.
We are shut about by guarding walls:
(We have built them lest we run
Mad from dreaming of naked fear
And of black things done.)
We are ringed all round by guarding walls,
So high, they shut the view.
Not all the guns that shatter the world
40 Can quite break through.
*
Oh, guns of France, oh, guns of France
Be still, you crash in vain…
Heavily up the south wind throb
Dull dreams of pain,…
Be still, be still, south wind, lest your
Blowing should bring the rain…
We’ll lie very quiet on Hurt Hill,
And sleep once again.
Oh, we’ll lie quite still, nor listen nor look,
50 While the earth’s bounds reel and shake,
Lest, battered too long, our walls and we
Should break …should break …
Rose Macaulay
As the Team’s Head-Brass
As the team’s head-brass flashed out on the turn
The lovers disappeared into the wood.
I sat among the boughs of the fallen elm
That strewed an angle of the fallow, and
Watched the plough narrowing a yellow square
Of charlock. Every time the horses turned
Instead of treading me down, the ploughman leaned
Upon the handles to say or ask a word,
About the weather, next about the war.
10 Scraping the share he faced towards the wood,
And screwed along the furrow till the brass flashed
Once more.
The blizzard felled the elm whose crest
I sat in, by a woodpecker’s round hole,
The ploughman said. ‘When will they take it away?’
‘When the war’s over.’ So the talk began –
One minute and an interval of ten,
A minute more and the same interval.
‘Have you been out?’ ‘No.’ ‘And don’t want to, perhaps?’
20 ‘If I could only come back again, I should.
I could spare an arm. I shouldn’t want to lose
A leg. If I should lose my head, why, so,
I should want nothing more…Have many gone
From here?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Many lost?’ ‘Yes: good few.
Only two teams work on the farm this year.
One of my mates is dead. The second day
In France they killed him. It was back in March,
The very night of the blizzard, too. Now if
He had stayed here we should have moved the tree.’
30 ‘And I should not have sat here. Everything
Would have been different. For it would have been
Another world.’ ‘Ay, and a better, though
If we could see all all might seem good.’ Then
The lovers came out of the wood again:
The horses started and for the last time
I watched the clods crumble and topple over
After the ploughshare and the stumbling team.
Edward Thomas
The Farmer, 1917
I see a farmer walking by himself
In the ploughed field, returning like the day
To his dark nest. The plovers circle round
In the gray sky; the blackbird calls; the thrush
Still sings – but all the rest have gone to sleep.
I see the farmer coming up the field,
Where the new corn is sown, but not yet sprung;
He seems to be the only man alive
And thinking through the twilight of this world.
10 I know that there is war behind those hills,
And I surmise, but cannot see the dead,
And cannot see the living in their midst –
So awfully and madly knit with death.
I cannot feel, but I know there is war,
And has been now for three eternal years,
Behind the subtle cinctures of those hills.
I see the farmer coming up the field,
And as I look, imagination lifts
The sullen veil of alternating cloud,
20 And I am stunned by what I see behind
His solemn and uncompromising form:
Wide hosts of men who once could walk like him
In freedom, quite alone with night and day,
Uncounted shapes of living flesh and bone,
Worn dull, quenched dry, gone blind and sick, with war;
And they are him and he is one with them;
They see him as he travels up the field.
O God, how lonely freedom seems to-day!
O single farmer walking through the world,
30 They bless the seed in you that earth shall reap,
When they, their countless lives, and all their th
oughts,
Lie scattered by the storm: when peace shall come
With stillness, and long shivers, after death.
Fredegond Shove
May, 1915
Let us remember Spring will come again
To the scorched, blackened woods, where the wounded trees
Wait with their old wise patience for the heavenly rain,
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
Lucky Blighters
‘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 unde
r 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
The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry Page 15
