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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14757 ***
+
+THE WAR POEMS OF SIEGFRIED SASSOON
+
+
+1919
+
+LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
+
+
+
+
+Dans la trêve désolée de cette matinée, ces hommes qui avaient été
+tenaillés par la fatigue, fouettés par la pluie, bouleversés par toute
+une nuit de tonnerre, ces rescapés des volcans et de l'inondation
+entrevoyaient à quel point la guerre, aussi hideuse au moral qu'au
+physique, non seulement viole le bon sens, avilit les grandes idées,
+commande tous les crimes--mais ils se rappelaient combien elle avait
+développé en eux et autour d'eux tous les mauvais instincts sans en
+excepter un seul; la méchanceté jusqu'au sadisme, l'égoïsme jusqu'à la
+férocité, le besoin de jouir jusqu'à la folie.
+
+HENRI BARBUSSE.
+
+(_Le Feu._)
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+
+Of these 64 poems, 12 are now published for the first time. The
+remainder are selected from two previous volumes.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+I
+
+PRELUDE: THE TROOPS                     11
+
+DREAMERS                                13
+
+THE REDEEMER                            14
+
+TRENCH DUTY                             16
+
+WIRERS                                  17
+
+BREAK OF DAY                            18
+
+A WORKING PARTY                         21
+
+STAND-TO: GOOD FRIDAY MORNING           24
+
+"IN THE PINK"                           25
+
+THE HERO                                26
+
+BEFORE THE BATTLE                       27
+
+THE ROAD                                28
+
+TWO HUNDRED YEARS AFTER                 29
+
+THE DREAM                               30
+
+AT CARNOY                               32
+
+BATTALION RELIEF                        33
+
+THE DUG-OUT                             35
+
+THE REAR-GUARD                          36
+
+I STOOD WITH THE DEAD                   38
+
+SUICIDE IN TRENCHES                     39
+
+ATTACK                                  40
+
+COUNTER-ATTACK                          41
+
+THE EFFECT                              43
+
+REMORSE                                 44
+
+IN AN UNDERGROUND DRESSING-STATION      45
+
+DIED OF WOUNDS                          46
+
+
+II
+
+"THEY"                                  47
+
+BASE DETAILS                            48
+
+LAMENTATIONS                            49
+
+THE GENERAL                             50
+
+HOW TO DIE                              51
+
+EDITORIAL IMPRESSIONS                   52
+
+FIGHT TO A FINISH                       53
+
+ATROCITIES                              54
+
+THE FATHERS                             55
+
+"BLIGHTERS"                             56
+
+GLORY OF WOMEN                          57
+
+THEIR FRAILTY                           58
+
+DOES IT MATTER?                         59
+
+SURVIVORS                               60
+
+JOY-BELLS                               61
+
+ARMS AND THE MAN                        62
+
+WHEN I'M AMONG A BLAZE OF LIGHTS        63
+
+THE KISS                                64
+
+THE TOMBSTONE-MAKER                     65
+
+THE ONE-LEGGED MAN                      66
+
+RETURN OF THE HEROES                    67
+
+
+III
+
+TWELVE MONTHS AFTER                     68
+
+TO ANY DEAD OFFICER                     69
+
+SICK LEAVE                              72
+
+BANISHMENT                              73
+
+AUTUMN                                  74
+
+REPRESSION OF WAR EXPERIENCE            75
+
+TOGETHER                                77
+
+THE HAWTHORN TREE                       78
+
+CONCERT PARTY                           79
+
+NIGHT ON THE CONVOY                     81
+
+A LETTER HOME                           83
+
+RECONCILIATION                          87
+
+MEMORIAL TABLET (GREAT WAR)             88
+
+THE DEATH-BED                           89
+
+AFTERMATH                               91
+
+SONG-BOOKS OF THE WAR                   93
+
+EVERYONE SANG                           95
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+PRELUDE: THE TROOPS
+
+Dim, gradual thinning of the shapeless gloom
+Shudders to drizzling daybreak that reveals
+Disconsolate men who stamp their sodden boots
+And turn dulled, sunken faces to the sky
+Haggard and hopeless. They, who have beaten down
+The stale despair of night, must now renew
+Their desolation in the truce of dawn,
+Murdering the livid hours that grope for peace.
+
+Yet these, who cling to life with stubborn hands,
+Can grin through storms of death and find a gap
+In the clawed, cruel tangles of his defence.
+They march from safety, and the bird-sung joy
+Of grass-green thickets, to the land where all
+Is ruin, and nothing blossoms but the sky
+That hastens over them where they endure
+Sad, smoking, flat horizons, reeking woods,
+And foundered trench-lines volleying doom for doom.
+
+O my brave brown companions, when your souls
+Flock silently away, and the eyeless dead,
+Shame the wild beast of battle on the ridge,
+Death will stand grieving in that field of war
+Since your unvanquished hardihood is spent.
+And through some mooned Valhalla there will pass
+Battalions and battalions, scarred from hell;
+The unreturning army that was youth;
+The legions who have suffered and are dust.
+
+
+DREAMERS
+
+Soldiers are citizens of death's gray land,
+  Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.
+In the great hour of destiny they stand,
+  Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
+Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
+  Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
+Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
+  They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.
+
+I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
+  And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
+Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
+  And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
+Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
+  And going to the office in the train.
+
+
+THE REDEEMER
+
+Darkness: the rain sluiced down; the mire was deep;
+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.
+
+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 shine.
+
+No thorny crown, only a woollen cap
+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.
+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 some one flung his burden in the muck,
+Mumbling: "O Christ Almighty, now I'm stuck!"
+
+
+TRENCH DUTY
+
+Shaken from sleep, and numbed and scarce awake,
+Out in the trench with three hours' watch to take,
+I blunder through the splashing mirk; and then
+Hear the gruff muttering voices of the men
+Crouching in cabins candle-chinked with light.
+Hark! There's the big bombardment on our right
+Rumbling and bumping; and the dark's a glare
+Of flickering horror in the sectors where
+We raid the Boche; men waiting, stiff and chilled,
+Or crawling on their bellies through the wire.
+"What? Stretcher-bearers wanted? Some one killed?"
+Five minutes ago I heard a sniper fire:
+Why did he do it?... Starlight overhead--
+Blank stars. I'm wide-awake; and some chap's dead.
+
+
+WIRERS
+
+"Pass it along, the wiring party's going out"--
+And yawning sentries mumble, "Wirers going out."
+Unravelling; twisting; hammering stakes with muffled thud,
+They toil with stealthy haste and anger in their blood.
+
+The Boche sends up a flare. Black forms stand rigid there,
+Stock-still like posts; then darkness, and the clumsy ghosts
+Stride hither and thither, whispering, tripped by clutching snare
+Of snags and tangles.
+               Ghastly dawn with vaporous coasts
+Gleams desolate along the sky, night's misery ended.
+
+Young Hughes was badly hit; I heard him carried away,
+Moaning at every lurch; no doubt he'll die to-day.
+But _we_ can say the front-line wire's been safely mended.
+
+
+BREAK OF DAY
+
+There seemed a smell of autumn in the air
+At the bleak end of night; he shivered there
+In a dank, musty dug-out where he lay,
+Legs wrapped in sand-bags,--lumps of chalk and clay
+Spattering his face. Dry-mouthed, he thought, "To-day
+We start the damned attack; and, Lord knows why,
+Zero's at nine; how bloody if I'm done in
+Under the freedom of that morning sky!"
+And then he coughed and dozed, cursing the din.
+
+Was it the ghost of autumn in that smell
+Of underground, or God's blank heart grown kind,
+That sent a happy dream to him in hell?--
+Where men are crushed like clods, and crawl to find
+Some crater for their wretchedness; who lie
+In outcast immolation, doomed to die
+Far from clean things or any hope of cheer,
+Cowed anger in their eyes, till darkness brims
+And roars into their heads, and they can hear
+Old childish talk, and tags of foolish hymns.
+
+He sniffs the chilly air; (his dreaming starts).
+He's riding in a dusty Sussex lane
+In quiet September; slowly night departs;
+And he's a living soul, absolved from pain.
+Beyond the brambled fences where he goes
+Are glimmering fields with harvest piled in sheaves,
+And tree-tops dark against the stars grown pale;
+Then, clear and shrill, a distant farm-cock crows;
+And there's a wall of mist along the vale
+Where willows shake their watery-sounding leaves.
+He gazes on it all, and scarce believes
+That earth is telling its old peaceful tale;
+He thanks the blessed world that he was born....
+Then, far away, a lonely note of the horn.
+
+They're drawing the Big Wood! Unlatch the gate,
+And set Golumpus going on the grass:
+_He_ knows the corner where it's best to wait
+And hear the crashing woodland chorus pass;
+The corner where old foxes make their track
+To the Long Spinney; that's the place to be.
+The bracken shakes below an ivied tree,
+And then a cub looks out; and "Tally-o-back!"
+He bawls, and swings his thong with volleying crack,--
+All the clean thrill of autumn in his blood,
+And hunting surging through him like a flood
+In joyous welcome from the untroubled past;
+While the war drifts away, forgotten at last.
+
+Now a red, sleepy sun above the rim
+Of twilight stares along the quiet weald,
+And the kind, simple country shines revealed
+In solitudes of peace, no longer dim.
+The old horse lifts his face and thanks the light,
+Then stretches down his head to crop the green.
+All things that he has loved are in his sight;
+The places where his happiness has been
+Are in his eyes, his heart, and they are good.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hark! there's the horn: they're drawing the Big Wood.
+
+
+A WORKING PARTY
+
+Three hours ago he blundered up the trench,
+Sliding and poising, groping with his boots;
+Sometimes he tripped and lurched against the walls
+With hands that pawed the sodden bags of chalk.
+He couldn't see the man who walked in front;
+Only he heard the drum and rattle of feet
+Stepping along the trench-boards,--often splashing
+Wretchedly where the sludge was ankle-deep.
+
+Voices would grunt, "Keep to your right,--make way!"
+When squeezing past the men from the front-line:
+White faces peered, puffing a point of red;
+Candles and braziers glinted through the chinks
+And curtain-flaps of dug-outs; then the gloom
+Swallowed his sense of sight; he stooped and swore
+Because a sagging wire had caught his neck.
+A flare went up; the shining whiteness spread
+And flickered upward, showing nimble rats,
+And mounds of glimmering sand-bags, bleached with rain;
+Then the slow, silver moment died in dark.
+
+The wind came posting by with chilly gusts
+And buffeting at corners, piping thin
+And dreary through the crannies; rifle-shots
+Would split and crack and sing along the night,
+And shells came calmly through the drizzling air
+To burst with hollow bang below the hill.
+
+Three hours ago he stumbled up the trench;
+Now he will never walk that road again:
+He must be carried back, a jolting lump
+Beyond all need of tenderness and care;
+A nine-stone corpse with nothing more to do.
+
+He was a young man with a meagre wife
+And two pale children in a Midland town;
+He showed the photograph to all his mates;
+And they considered him a decent chap
+Who did his work and hadn't much to say,
+And always laughed at other people's jokes
+Because he hadn't any of his own.
+
+That night, when he was busy at his job
+Of piling bags along the parapet,
+He thought how slow time went, stamping his feet,
+And blowing on his fingers, pinched with cold.
+
+He thought of getting back by half-past twelve,
+And tot of rum to send him warm to sleep
+In draughty dug-out frowsty with the fumes
+Of coke, and full of snoring, weary men.
+
+He pushed another bag along the top,
+Craning his body outward; then a flare
+Gave one white glimpse of No Man's Land and wire;
+And as he dropped his head the instant split
+His startled life with lead, and all went out.
+
+
+STAND-TO: GOOD FRIDAY MORNING
+
+I'd been on duty from two till four.
+I went and stared at the dug-out door.
+Down in the frowst I heard them snore.
+"Stand-to!" Somebody grunted and swore.
+  Dawn was misty; the skies were still;
+  Larks were singing, discordant, shrill;
+  _They_ seemed happy; but _I_ felt ill.
+Deep in water I splashed my way
+Up the trench to our bogged front line.
+Rain had fallen the whole damned night.
+O Jesus, send me a wound to-day,
+And I'll believe in Your bread and wine,
+And get my bloody old sins washed white!
+
+
+"IN THE PINK"
+
+So Davies wrote: "This leaves me in the pink."
+Then scrawled his name: "Your loving sweetheart, Willie."
+With crosses for a hug. He'd had a drink
+Of rum and tea; and, though the barn was chilly,
+For once his blood ran warm; he had pay to spend.
+Winter was passing; soon the year would mend.
+
+He couldn't sleep that night. Stiff in the dark
+He groaned and thought of Sundays at the farm,
+When he'd go out as cheerful as a lark
+In his best suit to wander arm-in-arm
+With brown-eyed Gwen, and whisper in her ear
+The simple, silly things she liked to hear.
+
+And then he thought: to-morrow night we trudge
+Up to the trenches, and my boots are rotten.
+Five miles of stodgy clay and freezing sludge,
+And everything but wretchedness forgotten.
+To-night he's in the pink; but soon he'll die.
+And still the war goes on; _he_ don't know why.
+
+
+THE HERO
+
+"Jack fell as he'd have wished," the Mother said,
+And folded up the letter that she'd read.
+"The Colonel writes so nicely." Something broke
+In the tired voice that quavered to a choke.
+She half looked up. "We mothers are so proud
+Of our dead soldiers." Then her face was bowed.
+
+Quietly the Brother Officer went out.
+He'd told the poor old dear some gallant lies
+That she would nourish all her days, no doubt.
+For while he coughed and mumbled, her weak eyes
+Had shone with gentle triumph, brimmed with joy,
+Because he'd been so brave, her glorious boy.
+
+He thought how "Jack," cold-footed, useless swine,
+Had panicked down the trench that night the mine
+Went up at Wicked Corner; how he'd tried
+To get sent home; and how, at last, he died,
+Blown to small bits. And no one seemed to care
+Except that lonely woman with white hair.
+
+
+BEFORE THE BATTLE
+
+Music of whispering trees
+Hushed by the broad-winged breeze
+Where shaken water gleams;
+And evening radiance falling
+With reedy bird-notes calling.
+O bear me safe through dark, you low-voiced streams.
+
+I have no need to pray
+That fear may pass away;
+I scorn the growl and rumble of the fight
+That summons me from cool
+Silence of marsh and pool,
+And yellow lilies islanded in light.
+O river of stars and shadows, lead me through the night.
+
+_June 25th, 1916._
+
+
+THE ROAD
+
+The road is thronged with women; soldiers pass
+And halt, but never see them; yet they're here--
+A patient crowd along the sodden grass,
+Silent, worn out with waiting, sick with fear.
+The road goes crawling up a long hillside,
+All ruts and stones and sludge, and the emptied dregs
+Of battle thrown in heaps. Here where they died
+Are stretched big-bellied horses with stiff legs;
+And dead men, bloody-fingered from the fight,
+Stare up at caverned darkness winking white.
+
+You in the bomb-scorched kilt, poor sprawling Jock,
+You tottered here and fell, and stumbled on,
+Half dazed for want of sleep. No dream could mock
+Your reeling brain with comforts lost and gone.
+You did not feel her arms about your knees,
+Her blind caress, her lips upon your head:
+Too tired for thoughts of home and love and ease,
+The road would serve you well enough for bed.
+
+
+TWO HUNDRED YEARS AFTER
+
+Trudging by Corbie Ridge one winter's night,
+(Unless old, hearsay memories tricked his sight),
+Along the pallid edge of the quiet sky
+He watched a nosing lorry grinding on,
+And straggling files of men; when these were gone,
+A double limber and six mules went by,
+Hauling the rations up through ruts and mud
+To trench-lines digged two hundred years ago.
+Then darkness hid them with a rainy scud,
+And soon he saw the village lights below.
+
+But when he'd told his tale, an old man said
+That _he'd_ seen soldiers pass along that hill;
+"Poor, silent things, they were the English dead
+Who came to fight in France and got their fill."
+
+
+THE DREAM
+
+I
+
+Moonlight and dew-drenched blossom, and the scent
+Of summer gardens; these can bring you all
+Those dreams that in the starlit silence fall:
+Sweet songs are full of odours.
+                                While I went
+Last night in drizzling dusk along a lane,
+I passed a squalid farm; from byre and midden
+Came the rank smell that brought me once again
+A dream of war that in the past was hidden.
+
+II
+
+Up a disconsolate straggling village street
+I saw the tired troops trudge: I heard their feet.
+The cheery Q.M.S. was there to meet
+And guide our Company in....
+                             I watched them stumble.
+Into some crazy hovel, too beat to grumble;
+Saw them file inward, slipping from their backs
+Rifles, equipment, packs.
+
+On filthy straw they sit in the gloom, each face
+Bowed to patched, sodden boots they must unlace,
+While the wind chills their sweat through chinks and cracks.
+
+III
+
+I'm looking at their blistered feet; young Jones
+Stares up at me, mud-splashed and white and jaded;
+Out of his eyes the morning light has faded.
+Old soldiers with three winters in their bones
+Puff their damp Woodbines, whistle, stretch their toes
+_They_ can still grin at me, for each of 'em knows
+That I'm as tired as they are....
+                                  Can they guess
+The secret burden that is always mine?--
+Pride in their courage; pity for their distress;
+And burning bitterness
+That I must take them to the accursèd Line.
+
+IV
+
+I cannot hear their voices, but I see
+Dim candles in the barn: they gulp their tea,
+And soon they'll sleep like logs. Ten miles away
+The battle winks and thuds in blundering strife.
+And I must lead them nearer, day by day,
+To the foul beast of war that bludgeons life.
+
+
+AT CARNOY
+
+Down in the hollow there's the whole Brigade
+Camped in four groups: through twilight falling slow
+I hear a sound of mouth-organs, ill-played,
+And murmur of voices, gruff, confused, and low.
+Crouched among thistle-tufts I've watched the glow
+Of a blurred orange sunset flare and fade;
+And I'm content. To-morrow we must go
+To take some cursèd Wood.... O world God made!
+
+_July 3rd, 1916._
+
+
+BATTALION RELIEF
+
+"_Fall in! Now, get a move on!_" (Curse the rain.)
+We splash away along the straggling village,
+Out to the flat rich country green with June....
+And sunset flares across wet crops and tillage,
+Blazing with splendour-patches. Harvest soon
+Up in the Line. "_Perhaps the War'll be done
+By Christmas-time. Keep smiling then, old son!_"
+
+Here's the Canal: it's dusk; we cross the bridge.
+"_Lead on there by platoons._" The Line's a-glare
+With shell-fire through the poplars; distant rattle
+Of rifles and machine-guns. "_Fritz is there!
+Christ, ain't it lively, Sergeant? Is't a battle?_"
+More rain: the lightning blinks, and thunder rumbles.
+"There's overhead artillery," some chap grumbles.
+
+"_What's all this mob, by the cross-road?_" (The guides)....
+"_Lead on with Number One_" (And off they go.)
+
+"_Three-minute intervals._" ... Poor blundering files,
+Sweating and blindly burdened; who's to know
+If death will catch them in those two dark miles?
+(More rain.) "_Lead on, Headquarters._"
+                               (That's the lot.)
+"_Who's that? O, Sergeant-major; don't get shot!
+And tell me, have we won this war or not?_"
+
+
+THE DUG-OUT
+
+Why do you lie with your legs ungainly huddled,
+And one arm bent across your sullen cold
+Exhausted face? It hurts my heart to watch you,
+Deep-shadow'd from the candle's guttering gold;
+And you wonder why I shake you by the shoulder;
+Drowsy, you mumble and sigh and turn your head....
+_You are too young to fall asleep for ever;
+And when you sleep you remind me of the dead._
+
+
+THE REAR-GUARD
+
+(Hindenburg Line, April 1917.)
+
+Groping along the tunnel, step by step,
+He winked his prying torch with patching glare
+From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air.
+
+Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes too vague to know,
+A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed;
+And he, exploring fifty feet below
+The rosy gloom of battle overhead.
+
+Tripping, he grabbed the wall; saw some one lie
+Humped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug,
+And stooped to give the sleeper's arm a tug.
+"I'm looking for headquarters." No reply.
+"God blast your neck!" (For days he'd had no sleep,)
+"Get up and guide me through this stinking place."
+Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap,
+And flashed his beam across the livid face
+Terribly glaring up, whose eyes yet wore
+Agony dying hard ten days before;
+And fists of fingers clutched a blackening wound.
+
+Alone he staggered on until he found
+Dawn's ghost that filtered down a shafted stair
+To the dazed, muttering creatures underground
+Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound.
+At last, with sweat of horror in his hair,
+He climbed through darkness to the twilight air,
+Unloading hell behind him step by step.
+
+
+I STOOD WITH THE DEAD
+
+I stood with the Dead, so forsaken and still:
+  When dawn was grey I stood with the Dead.
+And my slow heart said, "You must kill; you must kill:
+  Soldier, soldier, morning is red."
+
+On the shapes of the slain in their crumpled disgrace
+  I stared for a while through the thin cold rain....
+"O lad that I loved, there is rain on your face,
+  And your eyes are blurred and sick like the plain."
+
+I stood with the Dead.... They were dead; they were dead;
+  My heart and my head beat a march of dismay;
+And gusts of the wind came dulled by the guns....
+  "Fall in!" I shouted; "Fall in for your pay!"
+
+
+SUICIDE IN TRENCHES
+
+I knew a simple soldier boy
+Who grinned at life in empty joy,
+Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
+And whistled early with the lark.
+
+In winter trenches, cowed and glum
+With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
+He put a bullet through his brain.
+No one spoke of him again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
+Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
+Sneak home and pray you'll never know
+The hell where youth and laughter go.
+
+
+ATTACK
+
+At dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun
+In the wild purple of the glowering sun
+Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud
+The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one,
+Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire.
+The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed
+With bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear,
+Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire.
+Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear,
+They leave their trenches, going over the top,
+While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists,
+And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists,
+Flounders in mud. O Jesu, make it stop!
+
+
+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,
+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
+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;
+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.
+
+
+
+THE EFFECT
+
+     "The effect of our bombardment was terrific. One man told me
+     he had never seen so many dead before."
+
+     _War Correspondent._
+
+"_He'd never seen so many dead before._"
+They sprawled in yellow daylight while he swore
+And gasped and lugged his everlasting load
+Of bombs along what once had been a road.
+"_How peaceful are the dead._"
+Who put that silly gag in some one's head?
+
+"_He'd never seen so many dead before._"
+The lilting words danced up and down his brain,
+While corpses jumped and capered in the rain.
+No, no; he wouldn't count them any more....
+The dead have done with pain:
+They've choked; they can't come back to life again.
+
+When Dick was killed last week he looked like that,
+Flapping along the fire-step like a fish,
+After the blazing crump had knocked him flat....
+"_How many dead? As many as ever you wish.
+Don't count 'em; they're too many.
+Who'll buy my nice fresh corpses, two a penny?_"
+
+
+REMORSE
+
+Lost in the swamp and welter of the pit,
+He flounders off the duck-boards; only he knows
+Each flash and spouting crash,--each instant lit
+When gloom reveals the streaming rain. He goes
+Heavily, blindly on. And, while he blunders,
+"Could anything be worse than this?"--he wonders,
+Remembering how he saw those Germans run,
+Screaming for mercy among the stumps of trees:
+Green-faced, they dodged and darted: there was one
+Livid with terror, clutching at his knees....
+Our chaps were sticking 'em like pigs.... "O hell!"
+He thought--"there's things in war one dare not tell
+Poor father sitting safe at home, who reads
+Of dying heroes and their deathless deeds."
+
+
+IN AN UNDERGROUND DRESSING-STATION
+
+Quietly they set their burden down: he tried
+To grin; moaned; moved his head from side to side.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He gripped the stretcher; stiffened; glared; and screamed,
+"O put my leg down, doctor, do!" (He'd got
+A bullet in his ankle; and he'd been shot
+Horribly through the guts.) The surgeon seemed
+So kind and gentle, saying, above that crying,
+"You _must_ keep still, my lad." But he was dying.
+
+
+DIED OF WOUNDS
+
+His wet, white face and miserable eyes
+Brought nurses to him more than groans and sighs:
+But hoarse and low and rapid rose and fell
+His troubled voice: he did the business well.
+
+The ward grew dark; but he was still complaining,
+And calling out for "Dickie." "Curse the Wood!
+It's time to go; O Christ, and what's the good?--
+We'll never take it; and it's always raining."
+
+I wondered where he'd been; then heard him shout,
+"They snipe like hell! O Dickie, don't go out" ...
+I fell asleep ... next morning he was dead;
+And some Slight Wound lay smiling on his bed.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+"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 comrade's 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;
+And Bert's gone syphilitic: 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!"
+
+
+BASE DETAILS
+
+If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,
+  I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
+And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
+  You'd see me with my puffy petulant face,
+Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
+  Reading the Roll of Honour. "Poor young chap,"
+I'd say--"I used to know his father well;
+  Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap."
+And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
+I'd toddle safely home and die--in bed.
+
+
+LAMENTATIONS
+
+I found him in a guard-room at the Base.
+From the blind darkness I had heard his crying
+And blundered in. With puzzled, patient face
+A sergeant watched him; it was no good trying
+To stop it; for he howled and beat his chest.
+And, all because his brother had gone West,
+Raved at the bleeding war; his rampant grief
+Moaned, shouted, sobbed, and choked, while he was kneeling
+Half-naked on the floor. In my belief
+Such men have lost all patriotic feeling.
+
+
+THE GENERAL
+
+"Good-morning; good-morning!" the General said
+When we met him last week on our way to the Line,
+Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead,
+And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
+"He's a cheery old card," grunted Harry to Jack
+As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But he did for them both by his plan of attack.
+
+
+HOW TO DIE
+
+Dark clouds are smouldering into red
+  While down the craters morning burns.
+The dying soldier shifts his head
+  To watch the glory that returns:
+He lifts his fingers toward the skies
+  Where holy brightness breaks in flame;
+Radiance reflected in his eyes,
+  And on his lips a whispered name.
+
+You'd think, to hear some people talk,
+  That lads go West with sobs and curses,
+And sullen faces white as chalk,
+  Hankering for wreaths and tombs and hearses.
+But they've been taught the way to do it
+  Like Christian soldiers; not with haste
+And shuddering groans; but passing through it
+  With due regard for decent taste.
+
+
+EDITORIAL IMPRESSION
+
+He seemed so certain "all was going well,"
+As he discussed the glorious time he'd had
+While visiting the trenches.
+                             "One can tell
+You've gathered big impressions!" grinned the lad
+Who'd been severely wounded in the back
+In some wiped-out impossible Attack.
+"Impressions? Yes, most vivid! I am writing
+A little book called _Europe on the Rack_,
+Based on notes made while witnessing the fighting.
+I hope I've caught the feeling of 'the Line,'
+And the amazing spirit of the troops.
+By Jove, those flying-chaps of ours are fine!
+I watched one daring beggar looping loops,
+Soaring and diving like some bird of prey.
+And through it all I felt that splendour shine
+Which makes us win."
+                     The soldier sipped his wine.
+"Ah, yes, but it's the Press that leads the way!"
+
+
+FIGHT TO A FINISH
+
+The boys came back. Bands played and flags were flying,
+  And Yellow-Pressmen thronged the sunlit street
+To cheer the soldiers who'd refrained from dying,
+  And hear the music of returning feet.
+"Of all the thrills and ardours War has brought,
+This moment is the finest." (So they thought.)
+
+Snapping their bayonets on to charge the mob,
+  Grim Fusiliers broke ranks with glint of steel.
+At last the boys had found a cushy job.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  I heard the Yellow-Pressmen grunt and squeal;
+And with my trusty bombers turned and went
+To clear those Junkers out of Parliament.
+
+
+ATROCITIES
+
+You told me, in your drunken-boasting mood,
+How once you butchered prisoners. That was good!
+I'm sure you felt no pity while they stood
+Patient and cowed and scared, as prisoners should.
+
+How did you do them in? Come, don't be shy:
+You know I love to hear how Germans die,
+Downstairs in dug-outs. "Camerad!" they cry;
+Then squeal like stoats when bombs begin to fly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And you? I know your record. You went sick
+When orders looked unwholesome: then, with trick
+And lie, you wangled home. And here you are,
+Still talking big and boozing in a bar.
+
+
+THE FATHERS
+
+Snug at the club two fathers sat,
+Gross, goggle-eyed, and full of chat.
+One of them said: "My eldest lad
+Writes cheery letters from Bagdad.
+But Arthur's getting all the fun
+At Arras with his nine-inch gun."
+
+"Yes," wheezed the other, "that's the luck!
+My boy's quite broken-hearted, stuck
+In England training all this year.
+Still, if there's truth in what we hear,
+The Huns intend to ask for more
+  Before they bolt across the Rhine."
+I watched them toddle through the door--
+  These impotent old friends of mine.
+
+
+"BLIGHTERS"
+
+The house is crammed: tier beyond tier they grin
+And cackle at the Show, while prancing ranks
+Of harlots shrill the chorus, drunk with din;
+"We're sure the Kaiser loves the dear old Tanks!"
+
+I'd like to see a Tank come down the stalls,
+Lurching to rag-time tunes, or "Home, sweet Home,"--
+And there'd be no more jokes in Music-halls
+To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume.
+
+
+GLORY OF WOMEN
+
+You love us when we're heroes, home on leave,
+Or wounded in a mentionable place.
+You worship decorations; you believe
+That chivalry redeems the war's disgrace.
+You make us shells. You listen with delight,
+By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled.
+You crown our distant ardours while we fight,
+And mourn our laurelled memories when we're killed.
+
+You can't believe that British troops "retire"
+When hell's last horror breaks them, and they run,
+Trampling the terrible corpses--blind with blood.
+_O German mother dreaming by the fire,
+While you are knitting socks to send your son
+His face is trodden deeper in the mud._
+
+
+THEIR FRAILTY
+
+He's got a Blighty wound. He's safe; and then
+  War's fine and bold and bright.
+She can forget the doomed and prisoned men
+  Who agonize and fight.
+
+He's back in France. She loathes the listless strain
+  And peril of his plight.
+Beseeching Heaven to send him home again,
+  She prays for peace each night.
+
+Husbands and sons and lovers; everywhere
+  They die; War bleeds us white.
+Mothers and wives and sweethearts,--they don't care
+  So long as He's all right.
+
+
+DOES IT MATTER?
+
+Does it matter?--losing your legs?...
+For people will always be kind,
+And you need not show that you mind
+When the others come in after football
+To gobble their muffins and eggs.
+
+Does it matter?--losing your sight?...
+There's such splendid work for the blind;
+And people will always be kind,
+As you sit on the terrace remembering
+And turning your face to the light.
+
+Do they matter?--those dreams from the pit?...
+You can drink and forget and be glad,
+And people won't say that you're mad;
+For they'll know that you've fought for your country,
+And no one will worry a bit.
+
+
+SURVIVORS
+
+No doubt they'll soon get well; the shock and strain
+Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk.
+Of course they're "longing to go out again,"--
+These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk,
+They'll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed
+Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died,--
+Their dreams that drip with murder; and they'll be proud
+Of glorious war that shatter'd all their pride....
+Men who went out to battle, grim and glad;
+Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad.
+
+CRAIGLOCKHART,
+_Oct. 1917._
+
+
+JOY-BELLS
+
+Ring your sweet bells; but let them be farewells
+  To the green-vista'd gladness of the past
+That changed us into soldiers; swing your bells
+  To a joyful chime; but let it be the last.
+
+What means this metal in windy belfries hung
+  When guns are all our need? Dissolve these bells
+Whose tones are tuned for peace: with martial tongue
+  Let them cry doom and storm the sun with shells.
+
+Bells are like fierce-browed prelates who proclaim
+  That "if our Lord returned He'd fight for us."
+So let our bells and bishops do the same,
+  Shoulder to shoulder with the motor-bus.
+
+
+ARMS AND THE MAN
+
+Young Croesus went to pay his call
+On Colonel Sawbones, Caxton Hall:
+And, though his wound was healed and mended,
+He hoped he'd get his leave extended.
+
+The waiting-room was dark and bare.
+He eyed a neat-framed notice there
+Above the fireplace hung to show
+Disabled heroes where to go
+For arms and legs; with scale of price,
+And words of dignified advice
+How officers could get them free.
+
+Elbow or shoulder, hip or knee,--
+Two arms, two legs, though all were lost,
+They'd be restored him free of cost.
+
+Then a Girl-Guide looked in to say,
+"Will Captain Croesus come this way?"
+
+
+WHEN I'M AMONG A BLAZE OF LIGHTS ...
+
+When I'm among a blaze of lights,
+With tawdry music and cigars
+And women dawdling through delights,
+And officers at cocktail bars,--
+Sometimes I think of garden nights
+And elm trees nodding at the stars.
+
+I dream of a small firelit room
+With yellow candles burning straight,
+And glowing pictures in the gloom,
+And kindly books that hold me late.
+Of things like these I love to think
+When I can never be alone:
+Then some one says, "Another drink?"--
+And turns my living heart to stone.
+
+
+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;
+That in good fury he may feel
+The body where he sets his heel
+Quail from your downward darting kiss.
+
+
+THE TOMBSTONE-MAKER
+
+He primmed his loose red mouth, and leaned his head
+Against a sorrowing angel's breast, and said:
+"You'd think so much bereavement would have made
+Unusual big demands upon my trade.
+The War comes cruel hard on some poor folk--
+Unless the fighting stops I'll soon be broke."
+
+He eyed the Cemetery across the road--
+"There's scores of bodies out abroad, this while,
+That should be here by rights; they little know'd
+How they'd get buried in such wretched style."
+
+I told him, with a sympathetic grin,
+That Germans boil dead soldiers down for fat;
+And he was horrified. "What shameful sin!
+O sir, that Christian men should come to that!"
+
+
+THE ONE-LEGGED MAN
+
+Propped on a stick he viewed the August weald;
+Squat orchard trees and oasts with painted cowls;
+A homely, tangled hedge, a corn-stooked field,
+With sound of barking dogs and farmyard fowls.
+
+And he'd come home again to find it more
+Desirable than ever it was before.
+How right it seemed that he should reach the span
+Of comfortable years allowed to man!
+
+Splendid to eat and sleep and choose a wife,
+Safe with his wound, a citizen of life.
+He hobbled blithely through the garden gate,
+And thought; "Thank God they had to amputate!"
+
+
+RETURN OF THE HEROES
+
+    _A lady watches from the crowd,
+    Enthusiastic, flushed, and proud._
+
+"Oh! there's Sir Henry Dudster! Such a splendid leader!
+How pleased he looks! What rows of ribbons on his tunic!
+Such dignity.... Saluting.... (_Wave your flag ... now, Freda!_)...
+Yes, dear, I saw a Prussian General once,--at Munich.
+
+"Here's the next carriage!... Jack was once in Leggit's Corps;
+That's him!... I think the stout one is Sir Godfrey Stoomer.
+They _must_ feel sad to know they can't win any more
+Great victories!... Aren't they glorious men?... so full of humour!"
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+TWELVE MONTHS AFTER
+
+Hullo! here's my platoon, the lot I had last year.
+"The War'll be over soon."
+                           "What 'opes?"
+                                         "No bloody fear!"
+Then, "Number Seven, 'shun! All present and correct."
+They're standing in the sun, impassive and erect.
+Young Gibson with his grin; and Morgan, tired and white;
+Jordan, who's out to win a D.C.M. some night:
+And Hughes that's keen on wiring; and Davies ('79),
+Who always must be firing at the Boche front line.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Old soldiers never die; they simply fide a-why!"
+That's what they used to sing along the roads last spring;
+That's what they used to say before the push began;
+That's where they are to-day, knocked over to a man.
+
+
+TO ANY DEAD OFFICER
+
+Well, how are things in Heaven? I wish you'd say,
+  Because I'd like to know that you're all right.
+Tell me, have you found everlasting day,
+  Or been sucked in by everlasting night?
+For when I shut my eyes your face shows plain;
+  I hear you make some cheery old remark--
+I can rebuild you in my brain,
+  Though you've gone out patrolling in the dark.
+
+You hated tours of trenches; you were proud
+  Of nothing more than having good years to spend;
+Longed to get home and join the careless crowd
+  Of chaps who work in peace with Time for friend.
+That's all washed out now. You're beyond the wire:
+  No earthly chance can send you crawling back;
+You've finished with machine-gun fire--
+  Knocked over in a hopeless dud-attack.
+
+Somehow I always thought you'd get done in,
+  Because you were so desperate keen to live:
+You were all out to try and save your skin,
+  Well knowing how much the world had got to give.
+You joked at shells and talked the usual "shop,"
+  Stuck to your dirty job and did it fine:
+With "Jesus Christ! when _will_ it stop?
+  Three years.... It's hell unless we break their line."
+
+So when they told me you'd been left for dead
+  I wouldn't believe them, feeling it _must_ be true.
+Next week the bloody Roll of Honour said
+  "Wounded and missing"--(That's the thing to do
+When lads are left in shell-holes dying slow,
+  With nothing but blank sky and wounds that ache,
+Moaning for water till they know
+  It's night, and then it's not worth while to wake!)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Good-bye, old lad! Remember me to God,
+  And tell Him that our Politicians swear
+They won't give in till Prussian Rule's been trod
+  Under the Heel of England.... Are you there?...
+
+Yes ... and the War won't end for at least two years;
+But we've got stacks of men ... I'm blind with tears,
+  Staring into the dark. Cheero!
+I wish they'd killed you in a decent show.
+
+
+SICK LEAVE
+
+When I'm asleep, dreaming and lulled and warm,--
+They come, the homeless ones, the noiseless dead.
+While the dim charging breakers of the storm
+Bellow and drone and rumble overhead,
+Out of the gloom they gather about my bed.
+They whisper to my heart; their thoughts are mine.
+"Why are you here with all your watches ended?
+From Ypres to Frise we sought you in the Line."
+In bitter safety I awake, unfriended;
+And while the dawn begins with slashing rain
+I think of the Battalion in the mud.
+"When are you going out to them again?
+Are they not still your brothers through our blood?"
+
+
+BANISHMENT
+
+I am banished from the patient men who fight.
+They smote my heart to pity, built my pride.
+Shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side,
+They trudged away from life's broad wealds of light.
+Their wrongs were mine; and ever in my sight
+They went arrayed in honour. But they died,--
+Not one by one: and mutinous I cried
+To those who sent them out into the night.
+
+The darkness tells how vainly I have striven
+To free them from the pit where they must dwell
+In outcast gloom convulsed and jagged and riven
+By grappling guns. Love drove me to rebel.
+Love drives me back to grope with them through hell;
+And in their tortured eyes I stand forgiven.
+
+
+AUTUMN
+
+October's bellowing anger breaks and cleaves
+The bronzed battalions of the stricken wood
+In whose lament I hear a voice that grieves
+For battle's fruitless harvest, and the feud
+Of outraged men. Their lives are like the leaves
+Scattered in flocks of ruin, tossed and blown
+Along the westering furnace flaring red.
+O martyred youth and manhood overthrown,
+The burden of your wrongs is on my head.
+
+
+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.
+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?
+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,--
+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.
+
+
+TOGETHER
+
+Splashing along the boggy woods all day,
+And over brambled hedge and holding clay,
+I shall not think of him:
+But when the watery fields grow brown and dim,
+And hounds have lost their fox, and horses tire,
+I know that he'll be with me on my way
+Home through the darkness to the evening fire.
+
+He's jumped each stile along the glistening lanes;
+His hand will be upon the mud-soaked reins;
+Hearing the saddle creak,
+He'll wonder if the frost will come next week.
+I shall forget him in the morning light;
+And while we gallop on he will not speak:
+But at the stable-door he'll say good-night.
+
+
+THE HAWTHORN TREE
+
+Not much to me is yonder lane
+  Where I go every day;
+But when there's been a shower of rain
+  And hedge-birds whistle gay,
+I know my lad that's out in France
+  With fearsome things to see
+Would give his eyes for just one glance
+  At our white hawthorn tree.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Not much to me is yonder lane
+  Where _he_ so longs to tread;
+But when there's been a shower of rain
+I think I'll never weep again
+  Until I've heard he's dead.
+
+
+CONCERT PARTY
+
+(EGYPTIAN BASE CAMP)
+
+They are gathering round ...
+Out of the twilight; over the grey-blue sand,
+Shoals of low-jargoning men drift inward to the sound,--
+The jangle and throb of a piano ... tum-ti-tum ...
+Drawn by a lamp, they come
+Out of the glimmering lines of their tents, over the shuffling sand.
+
+O sing us the songs, the songs of our own land,
+You warbling ladies in white.
+Dimness conceals the hunger in our faces,
+This wall of faces risen out of the night,
+These eyes that keep their memories of the places
+So long beyond their sight.
+
+Jaded and gay, the ladies sing; and the chap in brown
+Tilts his grey hat; jaunty and lean and pale,
+He rattles the keys ... some actor-bloke from town ...
+
+"_God send you home_"; and then "_A long, long trail_";
+"_I hear you catting me_"; and "_Dixieland_" ...
+Sing slowly ... now the chorus ... one by one
+We hear them, drink them; till the concert's done.
+Silent, I watch the shadowy mass of soldiers stand.
+Silent, they drift away, over the glimmering sand.
+
+KANTARA,
+_April, 1918._
+
+
+NIGHT ON THE CONVOY
+
+(ALEXANDRIA-MARSEILLES)
+
+Out in the blustering darkness, on the deck
+A gleam of stars looks down. Long blurs of black,
+The lean Destroyers, level with our track,
+Plunging and stealing, watch the perilous way
+Through backward racing seas and caverns of chill spray.
+
+One sentry by the davits, in the gloom
+Stands mute; the boat heaves onward through the night.
+Shrouded is every chink of cabined light:
+And sluiced by floundering waves that hiss and boom
+And crash like guns, the troop-ship shudders ... doom.
+
+Now something at my feet stirs with a sigh;
+And slowly growing used to groping dark,
+I know that the hurricane-deck, down all its length,
+Is heaped and spread with lads in sprawling strength,--
+Blanketed soldiers sleeping. In the stark
+Danger of life at war, they lie so still,
+All prostrate and defenceless, head by head ...
+And I remember Arras, and that hill
+Where dumb with pain I stumbled among the dead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We are going home. The troop-ship, in a thrill
+Of fiery-chamber'd anguish, throbs and rolls.
+We are going home ... victims ... three thousand souls.
+
+_May, 1918._
+
+
+A LETTER HOME
+
+(To Robert Graves)
+
+I
+
+Here I'm sitting in the gloom
+Of my quiet attic room.
+France goes rolling all around,
+Fledged with forest May has crowned.
+And I puff my pipe, calm-hearted,
+Thinking how the fighting started,
+Wondering when we'll ever end it,
+Back to Hell with Kaiser send it,
+Gag the noise, pack up and go,
+Clockwork soldiers in a row.
+I've got better things to do
+Than to waste my time on you.
+
+II
+
+Robert, when I drowse to-night,
+Skirting lawns of sleep to chase
+Shifting dreams in mazy light,
+Somewhere then I'll see your face
+Turning back to bid me follow
+Where I wag my arms and hollo,
+Over hedges hasting after
+Crooked smile and baffling laughter,
+Running tireless, floating, leaping,
+Down your web-hung woods and valleys,
+Garden glooms and hornbeam alleys,
+Where the glowworm stars are peeping,
+Till I find you, quiet as stone
+On a hill-top all alone,
+Staring outward, gravely pondering
+Jumbled leagues of hillock-wandering.
+
+III
+
+You and I have walked together
+In the starving winter weather.
+We've been glad because we knew
+Time's too short and friends are few.
+We've been sad because we missed
+One whose yellow head was kissed
+By the gods, who thought about him
+Till they couldn't do without him.
+Now he's here again; I've seen
+Soldier David dressed in green,
+Standing in a wood that swings
+To the madrigal he sings.
+He's come back, all mirth and glory,
+Like the prince in a fairy story.
+Winter called him far away;
+Blossoms bring him home with May.
+
+IV
+
+Well, I know you'll swear it's true
+That you found him decked in blue
+Striding up through morning-land
+With a cloud on either hand.
+Out in Wales, you'll say, he marches
+Arm-in-arm with oaks and larches;
+Hides all night in hilly nooks,
+Laughs at dawn in tumbling brooks.
+Yet, it's certain, here he teaches
+Outpost-schemes to groups of beeches.
+And I'm sure, as here I stand,
+That he shines through every land,
+That he sings in every place
+Where we're thinking of his face.
+
+V
+
+Robert, there's a war in France;
+Everywhere men bang and blunder,
+Sweat and swear and worship Chance,
+Creep and blink through cannon thunder.
+Rifles crack and bullets flick,
+Sing and hum like hornet-swarms.
+Bones are smashed and buried quick.
+Yet, through stunning battle storms.
+All the while I watch the spark
+Lit to guide me; for I know
+Dreams will triumph, though the dark
+Scowls above me where I go.
+_You_ can hear me; _you_ can mingle
+Radiant folly with my jingle,
+War's a joke for me and you
+While we know such dreams are true!
+
+
+RECONCILIATION
+
+When you are standing at your hero's grave,
+Or near some homeless village where he died,
+Remember, through your heart's rekindling pride,
+The German soldiers who were loyal and brave.
+
+Men fought like brutes; and hideous things were done:
+And you have nourished hatred, harsh and blind.
+But in that Golgotha perhaps you'll find
+The mothers of the men who killed your son.
+
+_November, 1918._
+
+
+MEMORIAL TABLET
+
+(GREAT WAR)
+
+Squire nagged and bullied till I went to fight
+(Under Lord Derby's scheme). I died in hell--
+(They called it Passchendaele); my wound was slight,
+And I was hobbling back, and then a shell
+Burst slick upon the duck-boards; so I fell
+Into the bottomless mud, and lost the light.
+
+In sermon-time, while Squire is in his pew,
+He gives my gilded name a thoughtful stare;
+For though low down upon the list, I'm there:
+"In proud and glorious memory"--that's my due.
+Two bleeding years I fought in France for Squire;
+I suffered anguish that he's never guessed;
+Once I came home on leave; and then went west.
+What greater glory could a man desire?
+
+
+THE DEATH-BED
+
+He drowsed and was aware of silence heaped
+Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls;
+Aqueous like floating rays of amber light,
+Soaring and quivering in the wings of sleep,--
+Silence and safety; and his mortal shore
+Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death.
+
+Some one was holding water to his mouth.
+He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped
+Through crimson gloom to darkness; and forgot
+The opiate throb and ache that was his wound.
+Water--calm, sliding green above the weir;
+Water--a sky-lit alley for his boat,
+Bird-voiced, and bordered with reflected flowers
+And shaken hues of summer: drifting down,
+He dipped contented oars, and sighed, and slept.
+
+Night, with a gust of wind, was in the ward,
+Blowing the curtain to a glimmering curve.
+Night. He was blind; he could not see the stars
+Glinting among the wraiths of wandering cloud;
+Queer blots of colour, purple, scarlet, green,
+Flickered and faded in his drowning eyes.
+
+Rain; he could hear it rustling through the dark;
+Fragrance and passionless music woven as one;
+Warm rain on drooping roses; pattering showers
+That soak the woods; not the harsh rain that sweeps
+Behind the thunder, but a trickling peace
+Gently and slowly washing life away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He stirred, shifting his body; then the pain
+Leaped like a prowling beast, and gripped and tore
+His groping dreams with grinding claws and fangs.
+But some one was beside him; soon he lay
+Shuddering because that evil thing had passed.
+And Death, who'd stepped toward him, paused and stared.
+
+Light many lamps and gather round his bed.
+Lend him your eyes, warm blood, and will to live.
+Speak to him; rouse him; you may save him yet.
+He's young; he hated war; how should he die
+When cruel old campaigners win safe through?
+
+But Death replied: "I choose him." So he went,
+And there was silence in the summer night;
+Silence and safety; and the veils of sleep.
+Then, far away, the thudding of the guns.
+
+
+AFTERMATH
+
+_Have you forgotten yet?..._
+For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
+Like traffic checked awhile at the crossing of city ways:
+And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
+Like clouds in the lit heavens of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
+Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
+_But the past is just the same,--and War's a bloody game,...
+Have you forgotten yet?...
+Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget._
+
+Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz,--
+The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
+Do you remember the rats; and the stench
+Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench,--
+And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
+Do you ever stop and ask, "Is it all going to happen again?"
+
+Do you remember that hour of din before the attack,--
+And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
+As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
+Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
+With dying eyes and lolling heads,--those ashen-grey
+Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?
+
+_Have you forgotten yet?...
+Look up, and swear by the green of the Spring that you'll never forget._
+
+
+SONG-BOOKS OF THE WAR
+
+In fifty years, when peace outshines
+Remembrance of the battle lines,
+Adventurous lads will sigh and cast
+Proud looks upon the plundered past.
+On summer morn or winter's night,
+Their hearts will kindle for the fight,
+Reading a snatch of soldier-song,
+Savage and jaunty, fierce and strong;
+And through the angry marching rhymes
+Of blind regret and haggard mirth,
+They'll envy us the dazzling times
+When sacrifice absolved our earth.
+
+Some ancient man with silver locks
+Will lift his weary face to say:
+"War was a fiend who stopped our clocks
+Although we met him grim and gay."
+And then he'll speak of Haig's last drive,
+Marvelling that any came alive
+Out of the shambles that men built
+And smashed, to cleanse the world of guilt.
+But the boys, with grin and sidelong glance,
+Will think, "Poor grandad's day is done."
+And dream of lads who fought in France
+And lived in time to share the fun.
+
+
+EVERYONE SANG
+
+Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
+And I was filled with such delight
+As prisoned birds must find in freedom
+Winging wildly across the white
+Orchards and dark green fields; on; on; and out of sight.
+
+Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted,
+And beauty came like the setting sun.
+My heart was shaken with tears and horror
+Drifted away ... O but every one
+Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.
+
+_April, 1919._
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon
+by Siegfried Sassoon
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14757 ***
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
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+Project Gutenberg's The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon, by Siegfried Sassoon
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon
+
+Author: Siegfried Sassoon
+
+Release Date: January 22, 2005 [EBook #14757]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAR POEMS OF SIEGFRIED SASSOON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Linda Cantoni, and the PG Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WAR POEMS OF SIEGFRIED SASSOON
+
+
+1919
+
+LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
+
+
+
+
+Dans la trêve désolée de cette matinée, ces hommes qui avaient été
+tenaillés par la fatigue, fouettés par la pluie, bouleversés par toute
+une nuit de tonnerre, ces rescapés des volcans et de l'inondation
+entrevoyaient à quel point la guerre, aussi hideuse au moral qu'au
+physique, non seulement viole le bon sens, avilit les grandes idées,
+commande tous les crimes--mais ils se rappelaient combien elle avait
+développé en eux et autour d'eux tous les mauvais instincts sans en
+excepter un seul; la méchanceté jusqu'au sadisme, l'égoïsme jusqu'à la
+férocité, le besoin de jouir jusqu'à la folie.
+
+HENRI BARBUSSE.
+
+(_Le Feu._)
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+
+Of these 64 poems, 12 are now published for the first time. The
+remainder are selected from two previous volumes.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+I
+
+PRELUDE: THE TROOPS                     11
+
+DREAMERS                                13
+
+THE REDEEMER                            14
+
+TRENCH DUTY                             16
+
+WIRERS                                  17
+
+BREAK OF DAY                            18
+
+A WORKING PARTY                         21
+
+STAND-TO: GOOD FRIDAY MORNING           24
+
+"IN THE PINK"                           25
+
+THE HERO                                26
+
+BEFORE THE BATTLE                       27
+
+THE ROAD                                28
+
+TWO HUNDRED YEARS AFTER                 29
+
+THE DREAM                               30
+
+AT CARNOY                               32
+
+BATTALION RELIEF                        33
+
+THE DUG-OUT                             35
+
+THE REAR-GUARD                          36
+
+I STOOD WITH THE DEAD                   38
+
+SUICIDE IN TRENCHES                     39
+
+ATTACK                                  40
+
+COUNTER-ATTACK                          41
+
+THE EFFECT                              43
+
+REMORSE                                 44
+
+IN AN UNDERGROUND DRESSING-STATION      45
+
+DIED OF WOUNDS                          46
+
+
+II
+
+"THEY"                                  47
+
+BASE DETAILS                            48
+
+LAMENTATIONS                            49
+
+THE GENERAL                             50
+
+HOW TO DIE                              51
+
+EDITORIAL IMPRESSIONS                   52
+
+FIGHT TO A FINISH                       53
+
+ATROCITIES                              54
+
+THE FATHERS                             55
+
+"BLIGHTERS"                             56
+
+GLORY OF WOMEN                          57
+
+THEIR FRAILTY                           58
+
+DOES IT MATTER?                         59
+
+SURVIVORS                               60
+
+JOY-BELLS                               61
+
+ARMS AND THE MAN                        62
+
+WHEN I'M AMONG A BLAZE OF LIGHTS        63
+
+THE KISS                                64
+
+THE TOMBSTONE-MAKER                     65
+
+THE ONE-LEGGED MAN                      66
+
+RETURN OF THE HEROES                    67
+
+
+III
+
+TWELVE MONTHS AFTER                     68
+
+TO ANY DEAD OFFICER                     69
+
+SICK LEAVE                              72
+
+BANISHMENT                              73
+
+AUTUMN                                  74
+
+REPRESSION OF WAR EXPERIENCE            75
+
+TOGETHER                                77
+
+THE HAWTHORN TREE                       78
+
+CONCERT PARTY                           79
+
+NIGHT ON THE CONVOY                     81
+
+A LETTER HOME                           83
+
+RECONCILIATION                          87
+
+MEMORIAL TABLET (GREAT WAR)             88
+
+THE DEATH-BED                           89
+
+AFTERMATH                               91
+
+SONG-BOOKS OF THE WAR                   93
+
+EVERYONE SANG                           95
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+PRELUDE: THE TROOPS
+
+Dim, gradual thinning of the shapeless gloom
+Shudders to drizzling daybreak that reveals
+Disconsolate men who stamp their sodden boots
+And turn dulled, sunken faces to the sky
+Haggard and hopeless. They, who have beaten down
+The stale despair of night, must now renew
+Their desolation in the truce of dawn,
+Murdering the livid hours that grope for peace.
+
+Yet these, who cling to life with stubborn hands,
+Can grin through storms of death and find a gap
+In the clawed, cruel tangles of his defence.
+They march from safety, and the bird-sung joy
+Of grass-green thickets, to the land where all
+Is ruin, and nothing blossoms but the sky
+That hastens over them where they endure
+Sad, smoking, flat horizons, reeking woods,
+And foundered trench-lines volleying doom for doom.
+
+O my brave brown companions, when your souls
+Flock silently away, and the eyeless dead,
+Shame the wild beast of battle on the ridge,
+Death will stand grieving in that field of war
+Since your unvanquished hardihood is spent.
+And through some mooned Valhalla there will pass
+Battalions and battalions, scarred from hell;
+The unreturning army that was youth;
+The legions who have suffered and are dust.
+
+
+DREAMERS
+
+Soldiers are citizens of death's gray land,
+  Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.
+In the great hour of destiny they stand,
+  Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
+Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
+  Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
+Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
+  They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.
+
+I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
+  And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
+Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
+  And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
+Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
+  And going to the office in the train.
+
+
+THE REDEEMER
+
+Darkness: the rain sluiced down; the mire was deep;
+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.
+
+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 shine.
+
+No thorny crown, only a woollen cap
+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.
+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 some one flung his burden in the muck,
+Mumbling: "O Christ Almighty, now I'm stuck!"
+
+
+TRENCH DUTY
+
+Shaken from sleep, and numbed and scarce awake,
+Out in the trench with three hours' watch to take,
+I blunder through the splashing mirk; and then
+Hear the gruff muttering voices of the men
+Crouching in cabins candle-chinked with light.
+Hark! There's the big bombardment on our right
+Rumbling and bumping; and the dark's a glare
+Of flickering horror in the sectors where
+We raid the Boche; men waiting, stiff and chilled,
+Or crawling on their bellies through the wire.
+"What? Stretcher-bearers wanted? Some one killed?"
+Five minutes ago I heard a sniper fire:
+Why did he do it?... Starlight overhead--
+Blank stars. I'm wide-awake; and some chap's dead.
+
+
+WIRERS
+
+"Pass it along, the wiring party's going out"--
+And yawning sentries mumble, "Wirers going out."
+Unravelling; twisting; hammering stakes with muffled thud,
+They toil with stealthy haste and anger in their blood.
+
+The Boche sends up a flare. Black forms stand rigid there,
+Stock-still like posts; then darkness, and the clumsy ghosts
+Stride hither and thither, whispering, tripped by clutching snare
+Of snags and tangles.
+               Ghastly dawn with vaporous coasts
+Gleams desolate along the sky, night's misery ended.
+
+Young Hughes was badly hit; I heard him carried away,
+Moaning at every lurch; no doubt he'll die to-day.
+But _we_ can say the front-line wire's been safely mended.
+
+
+BREAK OF DAY
+
+There seemed a smell of autumn in the air
+At the bleak end of night; he shivered there
+In a dank, musty dug-out where he lay,
+Legs wrapped in sand-bags,--lumps of chalk and clay
+Spattering his face. Dry-mouthed, he thought, "To-day
+We start the damned attack; and, Lord knows why,
+Zero's at nine; how bloody if I'm done in
+Under the freedom of that morning sky!"
+And then he coughed and dozed, cursing the din.
+
+Was it the ghost of autumn in that smell
+Of underground, or God's blank heart grown kind,
+That sent a happy dream to him in hell?--
+Where men are crushed like clods, and crawl to find
+Some crater for their wretchedness; who lie
+In outcast immolation, doomed to die
+Far from clean things or any hope of cheer,
+Cowed anger in their eyes, till darkness brims
+And roars into their heads, and they can hear
+Old childish talk, and tags of foolish hymns.
+
+He sniffs the chilly air; (his dreaming starts).
+He's riding in a dusty Sussex lane
+In quiet September; slowly night departs;
+And he's a living soul, absolved from pain.
+Beyond the brambled fences where he goes
+Are glimmering fields with harvest piled in sheaves,
+And tree-tops dark against the stars grown pale;
+Then, clear and shrill, a distant farm-cock crows;
+And there's a wall of mist along the vale
+Where willows shake their watery-sounding leaves.
+He gazes on it all, and scarce believes
+That earth is telling its old peaceful tale;
+He thanks the blessed world that he was born....
+Then, far away, a lonely note of the horn.
+
+They're drawing the Big Wood! Unlatch the gate,
+And set Golumpus going on the grass:
+_He_ knows the corner where it's best to wait
+And hear the crashing woodland chorus pass;
+The corner where old foxes make their track
+To the Long Spinney; that's the place to be.
+The bracken shakes below an ivied tree,
+And then a cub looks out; and "Tally-o-back!"
+He bawls, and swings his thong with volleying crack,--
+All the clean thrill of autumn in his blood,
+And hunting surging through him like a flood
+In joyous welcome from the untroubled past;
+While the war drifts away, forgotten at last.
+
+Now a red, sleepy sun above the rim
+Of twilight stares along the quiet weald,
+And the kind, simple country shines revealed
+In solitudes of peace, no longer dim.
+The old horse lifts his face and thanks the light,
+Then stretches down his head to crop the green.
+All things that he has loved are in his sight;
+The places where his happiness has been
+Are in his eyes, his heart, and they are good.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hark! there's the horn: they're drawing the Big Wood.
+
+
+A WORKING PARTY
+
+Three hours ago he blundered up the trench,
+Sliding and poising, groping with his boots;
+Sometimes he tripped and lurched against the walls
+With hands that pawed the sodden bags of chalk.
+He couldn't see the man who walked in front;
+Only he heard the drum and rattle of feet
+Stepping along the trench-boards,--often splashing
+Wretchedly where the sludge was ankle-deep.
+
+Voices would grunt, "Keep to your right,--make way!"
+When squeezing past the men from the front-line:
+White faces peered, puffing a point of red;
+Candles and braziers glinted through the chinks
+And curtain-flaps of dug-outs; then the gloom
+Swallowed his sense of sight; he stooped and swore
+Because a sagging wire had caught his neck.
+A flare went up; the shining whiteness spread
+And flickered upward, showing nimble rats,
+And mounds of glimmering sand-bags, bleached with rain;
+Then the slow, silver moment died in dark.
+
+The wind came posting by with chilly gusts
+And buffeting at corners, piping thin
+And dreary through the crannies; rifle-shots
+Would split and crack and sing along the night,
+And shells came calmly through the drizzling air
+To burst with hollow bang below the hill.
+
+Three hours ago he stumbled up the trench;
+Now he will never walk that road again:
+He must be carried back, a jolting lump
+Beyond all need of tenderness and care;
+A nine-stone corpse with nothing more to do.
+
+He was a young man with a meagre wife
+And two pale children in a Midland town;
+He showed the photograph to all his mates;
+And they considered him a decent chap
+Who did his work and hadn't much to say,
+And always laughed at other people's jokes
+Because he hadn't any of his own.
+
+That night, when he was busy at his job
+Of piling bags along the parapet,
+He thought how slow time went, stamping his feet,
+And blowing on his fingers, pinched with cold.
+
+He thought of getting back by half-past twelve,
+And tot of rum to send him warm to sleep
+In draughty dug-out frowsty with the fumes
+Of coke, and full of snoring, weary men.
+
+He pushed another bag along the top,
+Craning his body outward; then a flare
+Gave one white glimpse of No Man's Land and wire;
+And as he dropped his head the instant split
+His startled life with lead, and all went out.
+
+
+STAND-TO: GOOD FRIDAY MORNING
+
+I'd been on duty from two till four.
+I went and stared at the dug-out door.
+Down in the frowst I heard them snore.
+"Stand-to!" Somebody grunted and swore.
+  Dawn was misty; the skies were still;
+  Larks were singing, discordant, shrill;
+  _They_ seemed happy; but _I_ felt ill.
+Deep in water I splashed my way
+Up the trench to our bogged front line.
+Rain had fallen the whole damned night.
+O Jesus, send me a wound to-day,
+And I'll believe in Your bread and wine,
+And get my bloody old sins washed white!
+
+
+"IN THE PINK"
+
+So Davies wrote: "This leaves me in the pink."
+Then scrawled his name: "Your loving sweetheart, Willie."
+With crosses for a hug. He'd had a drink
+Of rum and tea; and, though the barn was chilly,
+For once his blood ran warm; he had pay to spend.
+Winter was passing; soon the year would mend.
+
+He couldn't sleep that night. Stiff in the dark
+He groaned and thought of Sundays at the farm,
+When he'd go out as cheerful as a lark
+In his best suit to wander arm-in-arm
+With brown-eyed Gwen, and whisper in her ear
+The simple, silly things she liked to hear.
+
+And then he thought: to-morrow night we trudge
+Up to the trenches, and my boots are rotten.
+Five miles of stodgy clay and freezing sludge,
+And everything but wretchedness forgotten.
+To-night he's in the pink; but soon he'll die.
+And still the war goes on; _he_ don't know why.
+
+
+THE HERO
+
+"Jack fell as he'd have wished," the Mother said,
+And folded up the letter that she'd read.
+"The Colonel writes so nicely." Something broke
+In the tired voice that quavered to a choke.
+She half looked up. "We mothers are so proud
+Of our dead soldiers." Then her face was bowed.
+
+Quietly the Brother Officer went out.
+He'd told the poor old dear some gallant lies
+That she would nourish all her days, no doubt.
+For while he coughed and mumbled, her weak eyes
+Had shone with gentle triumph, brimmed with joy,
+Because he'd been so brave, her glorious boy.
+
+He thought how "Jack," cold-footed, useless swine,
+Had panicked down the trench that night the mine
+Went up at Wicked Corner; how he'd tried
+To get sent home; and how, at last, he died,
+Blown to small bits. And no one seemed to care
+Except that lonely woman with white hair.
+
+
+BEFORE THE BATTLE
+
+Music of whispering trees
+Hushed by the broad-winged breeze
+Where shaken water gleams;
+And evening radiance falling
+With reedy bird-notes calling.
+O bear me safe through dark, you low-voiced streams.
+
+I have no need to pray
+That fear may pass away;
+I scorn the growl and rumble of the fight
+That summons me from cool
+Silence of marsh and pool,
+And yellow lilies islanded in light.
+O river of stars and shadows, lead me through the night.
+
+_June 25th, 1916._
+
+
+THE ROAD
+
+The road is thronged with women; soldiers pass
+And halt, but never see them; yet they're here--
+A patient crowd along the sodden grass,
+Silent, worn out with waiting, sick with fear.
+The road goes crawling up a long hillside,
+All ruts and stones and sludge, and the emptied dregs
+Of battle thrown in heaps. Here where they died
+Are stretched big-bellied horses with stiff legs;
+And dead men, bloody-fingered from the fight,
+Stare up at caverned darkness winking white.
+
+You in the bomb-scorched kilt, poor sprawling Jock,
+You tottered here and fell, and stumbled on,
+Half dazed for want of sleep. No dream could mock
+Your reeling brain with comforts lost and gone.
+You did not feel her arms about your knees,
+Her blind caress, her lips upon your head:
+Too tired for thoughts of home and love and ease,
+The road would serve you well enough for bed.
+
+
+TWO HUNDRED YEARS AFTER
+
+Trudging by Corbie Ridge one winter's night,
+(Unless old, hearsay memories tricked his sight),
+Along the pallid edge of the quiet sky
+He watched a nosing lorry grinding on,
+And straggling files of men; when these were gone,
+A double limber and six mules went by,
+Hauling the rations up through ruts and mud
+To trench-lines digged two hundred years ago.
+Then darkness hid them with a rainy scud,
+And soon he saw the village lights below.
+
+But when he'd told his tale, an old man said
+That _he'd_ seen soldiers pass along that hill;
+"Poor, silent things, they were the English dead
+Who came to fight in France and got their fill."
+
+
+THE DREAM
+
+I
+
+Moonlight and dew-drenched blossom, and the scent
+Of summer gardens; these can bring you all
+Those dreams that in the starlit silence fall:
+Sweet songs are full of odours.
+                                While I went
+Last night in drizzling dusk along a lane,
+I passed a squalid farm; from byre and midden
+Came the rank smell that brought me once again
+A dream of war that in the past was hidden.
+
+II
+
+Up a disconsolate straggling village street
+I saw the tired troops trudge: I heard their feet.
+The cheery Q.M.S. was there to meet
+And guide our Company in....
+                             I watched them stumble.
+Into some crazy hovel, too beat to grumble;
+Saw them file inward, slipping from their backs
+Rifles, equipment, packs.
+
+On filthy straw they sit in the gloom, each face
+Bowed to patched, sodden boots they must unlace,
+While the wind chills their sweat through chinks and cracks.
+
+III
+
+I'm looking at their blistered feet; young Jones
+Stares up at me, mud-splashed and white and jaded;
+Out of his eyes the morning light has faded.
+Old soldiers with three winters in their bones
+Puff their damp Woodbines, whistle, stretch their toes
+_They_ can still grin at me, for each of 'em knows
+That I'm as tired as they are....
+                                  Can they guess
+The secret burden that is always mine?--
+Pride in their courage; pity for their distress;
+And burning bitterness
+That I must take them to the accursèd Line.
+
+IV
+
+I cannot hear their voices, but I see
+Dim candles in the barn: they gulp their tea,
+And soon they'll sleep like logs. Ten miles away
+The battle winks and thuds in blundering strife.
+And I must lead them nearer, day by day,
+To the foul beast of war that bludgeons life.
+
+
+AT CARNOY
+
+Down in the hollow there's the whole Brigade
+Camped in four groups: through twilight falling slow
+I hear a sound of mouth-organs, ill-played,
+And murmur of voices, gruff, confused, and low.
+Crouched among thistle-tufts I've watched the glow
+Of a blurred orange sunset flare and fade;
+And I'm content. To-morrow we must go
+To take some cursèd Wood.... O world God made!
+
+_July 3rd, 1916._
+
+
+BATTALION RELIEF
+
+"_Fall in! Now, get a move on!_" (Curse the rain.)
+We splash away along the straggling village,
+Out to the flat rich country green with June....
+And sunset flares across wet crops and tillage,
+Blazing with splendour-patches. Harvest soon
+Up in the Line. "_Perhaps the War'll be done
+By Christmas-time. Keep smiling then, old son!_"
+
+Here's the Canal: it's dusk; we cross the bridge.
+"_Lead on there by platoons._" The Line's a-glare
+With shell-fire through the poplars; distant rattle
+Of rifles and machine-guns. "_Fritz is there!
+Christ, ain't it lively, Sergeant? Is't a battle?_"
+More rain: the lightning blinks, and thunder rumbles.
+"There's overhead artillery," some chap grumbles.
+
+"_What's all this mob, by the cross-road?_" (The guides)....
+"_Lead on with Number One_" (And off they go.)
+
+"_Three-minute intervals._" ... Poor blundering files,
+Sweating and blindly burdened; who's to know
+If death will catch them in those two dark miles?
+(More rain.) "_Lead on, Headquarters._"
+                               (That's the lot.)
+"_Who's that? O, Sergeant-major; don't get shot!
+And tell me, have we won this war or not?_"
+
+
+THE DUG-OUT
+
+Why do you lie with your legs ungainly huddled,
+And one arm bent across your sullen cold
+Exhausted face? It hurts my heart to watch you,
+Deep-shadow'd from the candle's guttering gold;
+And you wonder why I shake you by the shoulder;
+Drowsy, you mumble and sigh and turn your head....
+_You are too young to fall asleep for ever;
+And when you sleep you remind me of the dead._
+
+
+THE REAR-GUARD
+
+(Hindenburg Line, April 1917.)
+
+Groping along the tunnel, step by step,
+He winked his prying torch with patching glare
+From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air.
+
+Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes too vague to know,
+A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed;
+And he, exploring fifty feet below
+The rosy gloom of battle overhead.
+
+Tripping, he grabbed the wall; saw some one lie
+Humped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug,
+And stooped to give the sleeper's arm a tug.
+"I'm looking for headquarters." No reply.
+"God blast your neck!" (For days he'd had no sleep,)
+"Get up and guide me through this stinking place."
+Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap,
+And flashed his beam across the livid face
+Terribly glaring up, whose eyes yet wore
+Agony dying hard ten days before;
+And fists of fingers clutched a blackening wound.
+
+Alone he staggered on until he found
+Dawn's ghost that filtered down a shafted stair
+To the dazed, muttering creatures underground
+Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound.
+At last, with sweat of horror in his hair,
+He climbed through darkness to the twilight air,
+Unloading hell behind him step by step.
+
+
+I STOOD WITH THE DEAD
+
+I stood with the Dead, so forsaken and still:
+  When dawn was grey I stood with the Dead.
+And my slow heart said, "You must kill; you must kill:
+  Soldier, soldier, morning is red."
+
+On the shapes of the slain in their crumpled disgrace
+  I stared for a while through the thin cold rain....
+"O lad that I loved, there is rain on your face,
+  And your eyes are blurred and sick like the plain."
+
+I stood with the Dead.... They were dead; they were dead;
+  My heart and my head beat a march of dismay;
+And gusts of the wind came dulled by the guns....
+  "Fall in!" I shouted; "Fall in for your pay!"
+
+
+SUICIDE IN TRENCHES
+
+I knew a simple soldier boy
+Who grinned at life in empty joy,
+Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
+And whistled early with the lark.
+
+In winter trenches, cowed and glum
+With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
+He put a bullet through his brain.
+No one spoke of him again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
+Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
+Sneak home and pray you'll never know
+The hell where youth and laughter go.
+
+
+ATTACK
+
+At dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun
+In the wild purple of the glowering sun
+Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud
+The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one,
+Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire.
+The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed
+With bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear,
+Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire.
+Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear,
+They leave their trenches, going over the top,
+While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists,
+And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists,
+Flounders in mud. O Jesu, make it stop!
+
+
+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,
+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
+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;
+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.
+
+
+
+THE EFFECT
+
+     "The effect of our bombardment was terrific. One man told me
+     he had never seen so many dead before."
+
+     _War Correspondent._
+
+"_He'd never seen so many dead before._"
+They sprawled in yellow daylight while he swore
+And gasped and lugged his everlasting load
+Of bombs along what once had been a road.
+"_How peaceful are the dead._"
+Who put that silly gag in some one's head?
+
+"_He'd never seen so many dead before._"
+The lilting words danced up and down his brain,
+While corpses jumped and capered in the rain.
+No, no; he wouldn't count them any more....
+The dead have done with pain:
+They've choked; they can't come back to life again.
+
+When Dick was killed last week he looked like that,
+Flapping along the fire-step like a fish,
+After the blazing crump had knocked him flat....
+"_How many dead? As many as ever you wish.
+Don't count 'em; they're too many.
+Who'll buy my nice fresh corpses, two a penny?_"
+
+
+REMORSE
+
+Lost in the swamp and welter of the pit,
+He flounders off the duck-boards; only he knows
+Each flash and spouting crash,--each instant lit
+When gloom reveals the streaming rain. He goes
+Heavily, blindly on. And, while he blunders,
+"Could anything be worse than this?"--he wonders,
+Remembering how he saw those Germans run,
+Screaming for mercy among the stumps of trees:
+Green-faced, they dodged and darted: there was one
+Livid with terror, clutching at his knees....
+Our chaps were sticking 'em like pigs.... "O hell!"
+He thought--"there's things in war one dare not tell
+Poor father sitting safe at home, who reads
+Of dying heroes and their deathless deeds."
+
+
+IN AN UNDERGROUND DRESSING-STATION
+
+Quietly they set their burden down: he tried
+To grin; moaned; moved his head from side to side.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He gripped the stretcher; stiffened; glared; and screamed,
+"O put my leg down, doctor, do!" (He'd got
+A bullet in his ankle; and he'd been shot
+Horribly through the guts.) The surgeon seemed
+So kind and gentle, saying, above that crying,
+"You _must_ keep still, my lad." But he was dying.
+
+
+DIED OF WOUNDS
+
+His wet, white face and miserable eyes
+Brought nurses to him more than groans and sighs:
+But hoarse and low and rapid rose and fell
+His troubled voice: he did the business well.
+
+The ward grew dark; but he was still complaining,
+And calling out for "Dickie." "Curse the Wood!
+It's time to go; O Christ, and what's the good?--
+We'll never take it; and it's always raining."
+
+I wondered where he'd been; then heard him shout,
+"They snipe like hell! O Dickie, don't go out" ...
+I fell asleep ... next morning he was dead;
+And some Slight Wound lay smiling on his bed.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+"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 comrade's 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;
+And Bert's gone syphilitic: 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!"
+
+
+BASE DETAILS
+
+If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,
+  I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
+And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
+  You'd see me with my puffy petulant face,
+Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
+  Reading the Roll of Honour. "Poor young chap,"
+I'd say--"I used to know his father well;
+  Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap."
+And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
+I'd toddle safely home and die--in bed.
+
+
+LAMENTATIONS
+
+I found him in a guard-room at the Base.
+From the blind darkness I had heard his crying
+And blundered in. With puzzled, patient face
+A sergeant watched him; it was no good trying
+To stop it; for he howled and beat his chest.
+And, all because his brother had gone West,
+Raved at the bleeding war; his rampant grief
+Moaned, shouted, sobbed, and choked, while he was kneeling
+Half-naked on the floor. In my belief
+Such men have lost all patriotic feeling.
+
+
+THE GENERAL
+
+"Good-morning; good-morning!" the General said
+When we met him last week on our way to the Line,
+Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead,
+And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
+"He's a cheery old card," grunted Harry to Jack
+As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But he did for them both by his plan of attack.
+
+
+HOW TO DIE
+
+Dark clouds are smouldering into red
+  While down the craters morning burns.
+The dying soldier shifts his head
+  To watch the glory that returns:
+He lifts his fingers toward the skies
+  Where holy brightness breaks in flame;
+Radiance reflected in his eyes,
+  And on his lips a whispered name.
+
+You'd think, to hear some people talk,
+  That lads go West with sobs and curses,
+And sullen faces white as chalk,
+  Hankering for wreaths and tombs and hearses.
+But they've been taught the way to do it
+  Like Christian soldiers; not with haste
+And shuddering groans; but passing through it
+  With due regard for decent taste.
+
+
+EDITORIAL IMPRESSION
+
+He seemed so certain "all was going well,"
+As he discussed the glorious time he'd had
+While visiting the trenches.
+                             "One can tell
+You've gathered big impressions!" grinned the lad
+Who'd been severely wounded in the back
+In some wiped-out impossible Attack.
+"Impressions? Yes, most vivid! I am writing
+A little book called _Europe on the Rack_,
+Based on notes made while witnessing the fighting.
+I hope I've caught the feeling of 'the Line,'
+And the amazing spirit of the troops.
+By Jove, those flying-chaps of ours are fine!
+I watched one daring beggar looping loops,
+Soaring and diving like some bird of prey.
+And through it all I felt that splendour shine
+Which makes us win."
+                     The soldier sipped his wine.
+"Ah, yes, but it's the Press that leads the way!"
+
+
+FIGHT TO A FINISH
+
+The boys came back. Bands played and flags were flying,
+  And Yellow-Pressmen thronged the sunlit street
+To cheer the soldiers who'd refrained from dying,
+  And hear the music of returning feet.
+"Of all the thrills and ardours War has brought,
+This moment is the finest." (So they thought.)
+
+Snapping their bayonets on to charge the mob,
+  Grim Fusiliers broke ranks with glint of steel.
+At last the boys had found a cushy job.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  I heard the Yellow-Pressmen grunt and squeal;
+And with my trusty bombers turned and went
+To clear those Junkers out of Parliament.
+
+
+ATROCITIES
+
+You told me, in your drunken-boasting mood,
+How once you butchered prisoners. That was good!
+I'm sure you felt no pity while they stood
+Patient and cowed and scared, as prisoners should.
+
+How did you do them in? Come, don't be shy:
+You know I love to hear how Germans die,
+Downstairs in dug-outs. "Camerad!" they cry;
+Then squeal like stoats when bombs begin to fly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And you? I know your record. You went sick
+When orders looked unwholesome: then, with trick
+And lie, you wangled home. And here you are,
+Still talking big and boozing in a bar.
+
+
+THE FATHERS
+
+Snug at the club two fathers sat,
+Gross, goggle-eyed, and full of chat.
+One of them said: "My eldest lad
+Writes cheery letters from Bagdad.
+But Arthur's getting all the fun
+At Arras with his nine-inch gun."
+
+"Yes," wheezed the other, "that's the luck!
+My boy's quite broken-hearted, stuck
+In England training all this year.
+Still, if there's truth in what we hear,
+The Huns intend to ask for more
+  Before they bolt across the Rhine."
+I watched them toddle through the door--
+  These impotent old friends of mine.
+
+
+"BLIGHTERS"
+
+The house is crammed: tier beyond tier they grin
+And cackle at the Show, while prancing ranks
+Of harlots shrill the chorus, drunk with din;
+"We're sure the Kaiser loves the dear old Tanks!"
+
+I'd like to see a Tank come down the stalls,
+Lurching to rag-time tunes, or "Home, sweet Home,"--
+And there'd be no more jokes in Music-halls
+To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume.
+
+
+GLORY OF WOMEN
+
+You love us when we're heroes, home on leave,
+Or wounded in a mentionable place.
+You worship decorations; you believe
+That chivalry redeems the war's disgrace.
+You make us shells. You listen with delight,
+By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled.
+You crown our distant ardours while we fight,
+And mourn our laurelled memories when we're killed.
+
+You can't believe that British troops "retire"
+When hell's last horror breaks them, and they run,
+Trampling the terrible corpses--blind with blood.
+_O German mother dreaming by the fire,
+While you are knitting socks to send your son
+His face is trodden deeper in the mud._
+
+
+THEIR FRAILTY
+
+He's got a Blighty wound. He's safe; and then
+  War's fine and bold and bright.
+She can forget the doomed and prisoned men
+  Who agonize and fight.
+
+He's back in France. She loathes the listless strain
+  And peril of his plight.
+Beseeching Heaven to send him home again,
+  She prays for peace each night.
+
+Husbands and sons and lovers; everywhere
+  They die; War bleeds us white.
+Mothers and wives and sweethearts,--they don't care
+  So long as He's all right.
+
+
+DOES IT MATTER?
+
+Does it matter?--losing your legs?...
+For people will always be kind,
+And you need not show that you mind
+When the others come in after football
+To gobble their muffins and eggs.
+
+Does it matter?--losing your sight?...
+There's such splendid work for the blind;
+And people will always be kind,
+As you sit on the terrace remembering
+And turning your face to the light.
+
+Do they matter?--those dreams from the pit?...
+You can drink and forget and be glad,
+And people won't say that you're mad;
+For they'll know that you've fought for your country,
+And no one will worry a bit.
+
+
+SURVIVORS
+
+No doubt they'll soon get well; the shock and strain
+Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk.
+Of course they're "longing to go out again,"--
+These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk,
+They'll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed
+Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died,--
+Their dreams that drip with murder; and they'll be proud
+Of glorious war that shatter'd all their pride....
+Men who went out to battle, grim and glad;
+Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad.
+
+CRAIGLOCKHART,
+_Oct. 1917._
+
+
+JOY-BELLS
+
+Ring your sweet bells; but let them be farewells
+  To the green-vista'd gladness of the past
+That changed us into soldiers; swing your bells
+  To a joyful chime; but let it be the last.
+
+What means this metal in windy belfries hung
+  When guns are all our need? Dissolve these bells
+Whose tones are tuned for peace: with martial tongue
+  Let them cry doom and storm the sun with shells.
+
+Bells are like fierce-browed prelates who proclaim
+  That "if our Lord returned He'd fight for us."
+So let our bells and bishops do the same,
+  Shoulder to shoulder with the motor-bus.
+
+
+ARMS AND THE MAN
+
+Young Croesus went to pay his call
+On Colonel Sawbones, Caxton Hall:
+And, though his wound was healed and mended,
+He hoped he'd get his leave extended.
+
+The waiting-room was dark and bare.
+He eyed a neat-framed notice there
+Above the fireplace hung to show
+Disabled heroes where to go
+For arms and legs; with scale of price,
+And words of dignified advice
+How officers could get them free.
+
+Elbow or shoulder, hip or knee,--
+Two arms, two legs, though all were lost,
+They'd be restored him free of cost.
+
+Then a Girl-Guide looked in to say,
+"Will Captain Croesus come this way?"
+
+
+WHEN I'M AMONG A BLAZE OF LIGHTS ...
+
+When I'm among a blaze of lights,
+With tawdry music and cigars
+And women dawdling through delights,
+And officers at cocktail bars,--
+Sometimes I think of garden nights
+And elm trees nodding at the stars.
+
+I dream of a small firelit room
+With yellow candles burning straight,
+And glowing pictures in the gloom,
+And kindly books that hold me late.
+Of things like these I love to think
+When I can never be alone:
+Then some one says, "Another drink?"--
+And turns my living heart to stone.
+
+
+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;
+That in good fury he may feel
+The body where he sets his heel
+Quail from your downward darting kiss.
+
+
+THE TOMBSTONE-MAKER
+
+He primmed his loose red mouth, and leaned his head
+Against a sorrowing angel's breast, and said:
+"You'd think so much bereavement would have made
+Unusual big demands upon my trade.
+The War comes cruel hard on some poor folk--
+Unless the fighting stops I'll soon be broke."
+
+He eyed the Cemetery across the road--
+"There's scores of bodies out abroad, this while,
+That should be here by rights; they little know'd
+How they'd get buried in such wretched style."
+
+I told him, with a sympathetic grin,
+That Germans boil dead soldiers down for fat;
+And he was horrified. "What shameful sin!
+O sir, that Christian men should come to that!"
+
+
+THE ONE-LEGGED MAN
+
+Propped on a stick he viewed the August weald;
+Squat orchard trees and oasts with painted cowls;
+A homely, tangled hedge, a corn-stooked field,
+With sound of barking dogs and farmyard fowls.
+
+And he'd come home again to find it more
+Desirable than ever it was before.
+How right it seemed that he should reach the span
+Of comfortable years allowed to man!
+
+Splendid to eat and sleep and choose a wife,
+Safe with his wound, a citizen of life.
+He hobbled blithely through the garden gate,
+And thought; "Thank God they had to amputate!"
+
+
+RETURN OF THE HEROES
+
+    _A lady watches from the crowd,
+    Enthusiastic, flushed, and proud._
+
+"Oh! there's Sir Henry Dudster! Such a splendid leader!
+How pleased he looks! What rows of ribbons on his tunic!
+Such dignity.... Saluting.... (_Wave your flag ... now, Freda!_)...
+Yes, dear, I saw a Prussian General once,--at Munich.
+
+"Here's the next carriage!... Jack was once in Leggit's Corps;
+That's him!... I think the stout one is Sir Godfrey Stoomer.
+They _must_ feel sad to know they can't win any more
+Great victories!... Aren't they glorious men?... so full of humour!"
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+TWELVE MONTHS AFTER
+
+Hullo! here's my platoon, the lot I had last year.
+"The War'll be over soon."
+                           "What 'opes?"
+                                         "No bloody fear!"
+Then, "Number Seven, 'shun! All present and correct."
+They're standing in the sun, impassive and erect.
+Young Gibson with his grin; and Morgan, tired and white;
+Jordan, who's out to win a D.C.M. some night:
+And Hughes that's keen on wiring; and Davies ('79),
+Who always must be firing at the Boche front line.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Old soldiers never die; they simply fide a-why!"
+That's what they used to sing along the roads last spring;
+That's what they used to say before the push began;
+That's where they are to-day, knocked over to a man.
+
+
+TO ANY DEAD OFFICER
+
+Well, how are things in Heaven? I wish you'd say,
+  Because I'd like to know that you're all right.
+Tell me, have you found everlasting day,
+  Or been sucked in by everlasting night?
+For when I shut my eyes your face shows plain;
+  I hear you make some cheery old remark--
+I can rebuild you in my brain,
+  Though you've gone out patrolling in the dark.
+
+You hated tours of trenches; you were proud
+  Of nothing more than having good years to spend;
+Longed to get home and join the careless crowd
+  Of chaps who work in peace with Time for friend.
+That's all washed out now. You're beyond the wire:
+  No earthly chance can send you crawling back;
+You've finished with machine-gun fire--
+  Knocked over in a hopeless dud-attack.
+
+Somehow I always thought you'd get done in,
+  Because you were so desperate keen to live:
+You were all out to try and save your skin,
+  Well knowing how much the world had got to give.
+You joked at shells and talked the usual "shop,"
+  Stuck to your dirty job and did it fine:
+With "Jesus Christ! when _will_ it stop?
+  Three years.... It's hell unless we break their line."
+
+So when they told me you'd been left for dead
+  I wouldn't believe them, feeling it _must_ be true.
+Next week the bloody Roll of Honour said
+  "Wounded and missing"--(That's the thing to do
+When lads are left in shell-holes dying slow,
+  With nothing but blank sky and wounds that ache,
+Moaning for water till they know
+  It's night, and then it's not worth while to wake!)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Good-bye, old lad! Remember me to God,
+  And tell Him that our Politicians swear
+They won't give in till Prussian Rule's been trod
+  Under the Heel of England.... Are you there?...
+
+Yes ... and the War won't end for at least two years;
+But we've got stacks of men ... I'm blind with tears,
+  Staring into the dark. Cheero!
+I wish they'd killed you in a decent show.
+
+
+SICK LEAVE
+
+When I'm asleep, dreaming and lulled and warm,--
+They come, the homeless ones, the noiseless dead.
+While the dim charging breakers of the storm
+Bellow and drone and rumble overhead,
+Out of the gloom they gather about my bed.
+They whisper to my heart; their thoughts are mine.
+"Why are you here with all your watches ended?
+From Ypres to Frise we sought you in the Line."
+In bitter safety I awake, unfriended;
+And while the dawn begins with slashing rain
+I think of the Battalion in the mud.
+"When are you going out to them again?
+Are they not still your brothers through our blood?"
+
+
+BANISHMENT
+
+I am banished from the patient men who fight.
+They smote my heart to pity, built my pride.
+Shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side,
+They trudged away from life's broad wealds of light.
+Their wrongs were mine; and ever in my sight
+They went arrayed in honour. But they died,--
+Not one by one: and mutinous I cried
+To those who sent them out into the night.
+
+The darkness tells how vainly I have striven
+To free them from the pit where they must dwell
+In outcast gloom convulsed and jagged and riven
+By grappling guns. Love drove me to rebel.
+Love drives me back to grope with them through hell;
+And in their tortured eyes I stand forgiven.
+
+
+AUTUMN
+
+October's bellowing anger breaks and cleaves
+The bronzed battalions of the stricken wood
+In whose lament I hear a voice that grieves
+For battle's fruitless harvest, and the feud
+Of outraged men. Their lives are like the leaves
+Scattered in flocks of ruin, tossed and blown
+Along the westering furnace flaring red.
+O martyred youth and manhood overthrown,
+The burden of your wrongs is on my head.
+
+
+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.
+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?
+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,--
+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.
+
+
+TOGETHER
+
+Splashing along the boggy woods all day,
+And over brambled hedge and holding clay,
+I shall not think of him:
+But when the watery fields grow brown and dim,
+And hounds have lost their fox, and horses tire,
+I know that he'll be with me on my way
+Home through the darkness to the evening fire.
+
+He's jumped each stile along the glistening lanes;
+His hand will be upon the mud-soaked reins;
+Hearing the saddle creak,
+He'll wonder if the frost will come next week.
+I shall forget him in the morning light;
+And while we gallop on he will not speak:
+But at the stable-door he'll say good-night.
+
+
+THE HAWTHORN TREE
+
+Not much to me is yonder lane
+  Where I go every day;
+But when there's been a shower of rain
+  And hedge-birds whistle gay,
+I know my lad that's out in France
+  With fearsome things to see
+Would give his eyes for just one glance
+  At our white hawthorn tree.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Not much to me is yonder lane
+  Where _he_ so longs to tread;
+But when there's been a shower of rain
+I think I'll never weep again
+  Until I've heard he's dead.
+
+
+CONCERT PARTY
+
+(EGYPTIAN BASE CAMP)
+
+They are gathering round ...
+Out of the twilight; over the grey-blue sand,
+Shoals of low-jargoning men drift inward to the sound,--
+The jangle and throb of a piano ... tum-ti-tum ...
+Drawn by a lamp, they come
+Out of the glimmering lines of their tents, over the shuffling sand.
+
+O sing us the songs, the songs of our own land,
+You warbling ladies in white.
+Dimness conceals the hunger in our faces,
+This wall of faces risen out of the night,
+These eyes that keep their memories of the places
+So long beyond their sight.
+
+Jaded and gay, the ladies sing; and the chap in brown
+Tilts his grey hat; jaunty and lean and pale,
+He rattles the keys ... some actor-bloke from town ...
+
+"_God send you home_"; and then "_A long, long trail_";
+"_I hear you catting me_"; and "_Dixieland_" ...
+Sing slowly ... now the chorus ... one by one
+We hear them, drink them; till the concert's done.
+Silent, I watch the shadowy mass of soldiers stand.
+Silent, they drift away, over the glimmering sand.
+
+KANTARA,
+_April, 1918._
+
+
+NIGHT ON THE CONVOY
+
+(ALEXANDRIA-MARSEILLES)
+
+Out in the blustering darkness, on the deck
+A gleam of stars looks down. Long blurs of black,
+The lean Destroyers, level with our track,
+Plunging and stealing, watch the perilous way
+Through backward racing seas and caverns of chill spray.
+
+One sentry by the davits, in the gloom
+Stands mute; the boat heaves onward through the night.
+Shrouded is every chink of cabined light:
+And sluiced by floundering waves that hiss and boom
+And crash like guns, the troop-ship shudders ... doom.
+
+Now something at my feet stirs with a sigh;
+And slowly growing used to groping dark,
+I know that the hurricane-deck, down all its length,
+Is heaped and spread with lads in sprawling strength,--
+Blanketed soldiers sleeping. In the stark
+Danger of life at war, they lie so still,
+All prostrate and defenceless, head by head ...
+And I remember Arras, and that hill
+Where dumb with pain I stumbled among the dead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We are going home. The troop-ship, in a thrill
+Of fiery-chamber'd anguish, throbs and rolls.
+We are going home ... victims ... three thousand souls.
+
+_May, 1918._
+
+
+A LETTER HOME
+
+(To Robert Graves)
+
+I
+
+Here I'm sitting in the gloom
+Of my quiet attic room.
+France goes rolling all around,
+Fledged with forest May has crowned.
+And I puff my pipe, calm-hearted,
+Thinking how the fighting started,
+Wondering when we'll ever end it,
+Back to Hell with Kaiser send it,
+Gag the noise, pack up and go,
+Clockwork soldiers in a row.
+I've got better things to do
+Than to waste my time on you.
+
+II
+
+Robert, when I drowse to-night,
+Skirting lawns of sleep to chase
+Shifting dreams in mazy light,
+Somewhere then I'll see your face
+Turning back to bid me follow
+Where I wag my arms and hollo,
+Over hedges hasting after
+Crooked smile and baffling laughter,
+Running tireless, floating, leaping,
+Down your web-hung woods and valleys,
+Garden glooms and hornbeam alleys,
+Where the glowworm stars are peeping,
+Till I find you, quiet as stone
+On a hill-top all alone,
+Staring outward, gravely pondering
+Jumbled leagues of hillock-wandering.
+
+III
+
+You and I have walked together
+In the starving winter weather.
+We've been glad because we knew
+Time's too short and friends are few.
+We've been sad because we missed
+One whose yellow head was kissed
+By the gods, who thought about him
+Till they couldn't do without him.
+Now he's here again; I've seen
+Soldier David dressed in green,
+Standing in a wood that swings
+To the madrigal he sings.
+He's come back, all mirth and glory,
+Like the prince in a fairy story.
+Winter called him far away;
+Blossoms bring him home with May.
+
+IV
+
+Well, I know you'll swear it's true
+That you found him decked in blue
+Striding up through morning-land
+With a cloud on either hand.
+Out in Wales, you'll say, he marches
+Arm-in-arm with oaks and larches;
+Hides all night in hilly nooks,
+Laughs at dawn in tumbling brooks.
+Yet, it's certain, here he teaches
+Outpost-schemes to groups of beeches.
+And I'm sure, as here I stand,
+That he shines through every land,
+That he sings in every place
+Where we're thinking of his face.
+
+V
+
+Robert, there's a war in France;
+Everywhere men bang and blunder,
+Sweat and swear and worship Chance,
+Creep and blink through cannon thunder.
+Rifles crack and bullets flick,
+Sing and hum like hornet-swarms.
+Bones are smashed and buried quick.
+Yet, through stunning battle storms.
+All the while I watch the spark
+Lit to guide me; for I know
+Dreams will triumph, though the dark
+Scowls above me where I go.
+_You_ can hear me; _you_ can mingle
+Radiant folly with my jingle,
+War's a joke for me and you
+While we know such dreams are true!
+
+
+RECONCILIATION
+
+When you are standing at your hero's grave,
+Or near some homeless village where he died,
+Remember, through your heart's rekindling pride,
+The German soldiers who were loyal and brave.
+
+Men fought like brutes; and hideous things were done:
+And you have nourished hatred, harsh and blind.
+But in that Golgotha perhaps you'll find
+The mothers of the men who killed your son.
+
+_November, 1918._
+
+
+MEMORIAL TABLET
+
+(GREAT WAR)
+
+Squire nagged and bullied till I went to fight
+(Under Lord Derby's scheme). I died in hell--
+(They called it Passchendaele); my wound was slight,
+And I was hobbling back, and then a shell
+Burst slick upon the duck-boards; so I fell
+Into the bottomless mud, and lost the light.
+
+In sermon-time, while Squire is in his pew,
+He gives my gilded name a thoughtful stare;
+For though low down upon the list, I'm there:
+"In proud and glorious memory"--that's my due.
+Two bleeding years I fought in France for Squire;
+I suffered anguish that he's never guessed;
+Once I came home on leave; and then went west.
+What greater glory could a man desire?
+
+
+THE DEATH-BED
+
+He drowsed and was aware of silence heaped
+Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls;
+Aqueous like floating rays of amber light,
+Soaring and quivering in the wings of sleep,--
+Silence and safety; and his mortal shore
+Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death.
+
+Some one was holding water to his mouth.
+He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped
+Through crimson gloom to darkness; and forgot
+The opiate throb and ache that was his wound.
+Water--calm, sliding green above the weir;
+Water--a sky-lit alley for his boat,
+Bird-voiced, and bordered with reflected flowers
+And shaken hues of summer: drifting down,
+He dipped contented oars, and sighed, and slept.
+
+Night, with a gust of wind, was in the ward,
+Blowing the curtain to a glimmering curve.
+Night. He was blind; he could not see the stars
+Glinting among the wraiths of wandering cloud;
+Queer blots of colour, purple, scarlet, green,
+Flickered and faded in his drowning eyes.
+
+Rain; he could hear it rustling through the dark;
+Fragrance and passionless music woven as one;
+Warm rain on drooping roses; pattering showers
+That soak the woods; not the harsh rain that sweeps
+Behind the thunder, but a trickling peace
+Gently and slowly washing life away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He stirred, shifting his body; then the pain
+Leaped like a prowling beast, and gripped and tore
+His groping dreams with grinding claws and fangs.
+But some one was beside him; soon he lay
+Shuddering because that evil thing had passed.
+And Death, who'd stepped toward him, paused and stared.
+
+Light many lamps and gather round his bed.
+Lend him your eyes, warm blood, and will to live.
+Speak to him; rouse him; you may save him yet.
+He's young; he hated war; how should he die
+When cruel old campaigners win safe through?
+
+But Death replied: "I choose him." So he went,
+And there was silence in the summer night;
+Silence and safety; and the veils of sleep.
+Then, far away, the thudding of the guns.
+
+
+AFTERMATH
+
+_Have you forgotten yet?..._
+For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
+Like traffic checked awhile at the crossing of city ways:
+And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
+Like clouds in the lit heavens of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
+Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
+_But the past is just the same,--and War's a bloody game,...
+Have you forgotten yet?...
+Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget._
+
+Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz,--
+The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
+Do you remember the rats; and the stench
+Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench,--
+And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
+Do you ever stop and ask, "Is it all going to happen again?"
+
+Do you remember that hour of din before the attack,--
+And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
+As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
+Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
+With dying eyes and lolling heads,--those ashen-grey
+Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?
+
+_Have you forgotten yet?...
+Look up, and swear by the green of the Spring that you'll never forget._
+
+
+SONG-BOOKS OF THE WAR
+
+In fifty years, when peace outshines
+Remembrance of the battle lines,
+Adventurous lads will sigh and cast
+Proud looks upon the plundered past.
+On summer morn or winter's night,
+Their hearts will kindle for the fight,
+Reading a snatch of soldier-song,
+Savage and jaunty, fierce and strong;
+And through the angry marching rhymes
+Of blind regret and haggard mirth,
+They'll envy us the dazzling times
+When sacrifice absolved our earth.
+
+Some ancient man with silver locks
+Will lift his weary face to say:
+"War was a fiend who stopped our clocks
+Although we met him grim and gay."
+And then he'll speak of Haig's last drive,
+Marvelling that any came alive
+Out of the shambles that men built
+And smashed, to cleanse the world of guilt.
+But the boys, with grin and sidelong glance,
+Will think, "Poor grandad's day is done."
+And dream of lads who fought in France
+And lived in time to share the fun.
+
+
+EVERYONE SANG
+
+Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
+And I was filled with such delight
+As prisoned birds must find in freedom
+Winging wildly across the white
+Orchards and dark green fields; on; on; and out of sight.
+
+Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted,
+And beauty came like the setting sun.
+My heart was shaken with tears and horror
+Drifted away ... O but every one
+Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.
+
+_April, 1919._
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon
+by Siegfried Sassoon
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAR POEMS OF SIEGFRIED SASSOON ***
+
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+Project Gutenberg's The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon, by Siegfried Sassoon
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon
+
+Author: Siegfried Sassoon
+
+Release Date: January 22, 2005 [EBook #14757]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAR POEMS OF SIEGFRIED SASSOON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Linda Cantoni, and the PG Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WAR POEMS OF SIEGFRIED SASSOON
+
+
+1919
+
+LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
+
+
+
+
+Dans la treve desolee de cette matinee, ces hommes qui avaient ete
+tenailles par la fatigue, fouettes par la pluie, bouleverses par toute
+une nuit de tonnerre, ces rescapes des volcans et de l'inondation
+entrevoyaient a quel point la guerre, aussi hideuse au moral qu'au
+physique, non seulement viole le bon sens, avilit les grandes idees,
+commande tous les crimes--mais ils se rappelaient combien elle avait
+developpe en eux et autour d'eux tous les mauvais instincts sans en
+excepter un seul; la mechancete jusqu'au sadisme, l'egoisme jusqu'a la
+ferocite, le besoin de jouir jusqu'a la folie.
+
+HENRI BARBUSSE.
+
+(_Le Feu._)
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+
+Of these 64 poems, 12 are now published for the first time. The
+remainder are selected from two previous volumes.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+I
+
+PRELUDE: THE TROOPS                     11
+
+DREAMERS                                13
+
+THE REDEEMER                            14
+
+TRENCH DUTY                             16
+
+WIRERS                                  17
+
+BREAK OF DAY                            18
+
+A WORKING PARTY                         21
+
+STAND-TO: GOOD FRIDAY MORNING           24
+
+"IN THE PINK"                           25
+
+THE HERO                                26
+
+BEFORE THE BATTLE                       27
+
+THE ROAD                                28
+
+TWO HUNDRED YEARS AFTER                 29
+
+THE DREAM                               30
+
+AT CARNOY                               32
+
+BATTALION RELIEF                        33
+
+THE DUG-OUT                             35
+
+THE REAR-GUARD                          36
+
+I STOOD WITH THE DEAD                   38
+
+SUICIDE IN TRENCHES                     39
+
+ATTACK                                  40
+
+COUNTER-ATTACK                          41
+
+THE EFFECT                              43
+
+REMORSE                                 44
+
+IN AN UNDERGROUND DRESSING-STATION      45
+
+DIED OF WOUNDS                          46
+
+
+II
+
+"THEY"                                  47
+
+BASE DETAILS                            48
+
+LAMENTATIONS                            49
+
+THE GENERAL                             50
+
+HOW TO DIE                              51
+
+EDITORIAL IMPRESSIONS                   52
+
+FIGHT TO A FINISH                       53
+
+ATROCITIES                              54
+
+THE FATHERS                             55
+
+"BLIGHTERS"                             56
+
+GLORY OF WOMEN                          57
+
+THEIR FRAILTY                           58
+
+DOES IT MATTER?                         59
+
+SURVIVORS                               60
+
+JOY-BELLS                               61
+
+ARMS AND THE MAN                        62
+
+WHEN I'M AMONG A BLAZE OF LIGHTS        63
+
+THE KISS                                64
+
+THE TOMBSTONE-MAKER                     65
+
+THE ONE-LEGGED MAN                      66
+
+RETURN OF THE HEROES                    67
+
+
+III
+
+TWELVE MONTHS AFTER                     68
+
+TO ANY DEAD OFFICER                     69
+
+SICK LEAVE                              72
+
+BANISHMENT                              73
+
+AUTUMN                                  74
+
+REPRESSION OF WAR EXPERIENCE            75
+
+TOGETHER                                77
+
+THE HAWTHORN TREE                       78
+
+CONCERT PARTY                           79
+
+NIGHT ON THE CONVOY                     81
+
+A LETTER HOME                           83
+
+RECONCILIATION                          87
+
+MEMORIAL TABLET (GREAT WAR)             88
+
+THE DEATH-BED                           89
+
+AFTERMATH                               91
+
+SONG-BOOKS OF THE WAR                   93
+
+EVERYONE SANG                           95
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+PRELUDE: THE TROOPS
+
+Dim, gradual thinning of the shapeless gloom
+Shudders to drizzling daybreak that reveals
+Disconsolate men who stamp their sodden boots
+And turn dulled, sunken faces to the sky
+Haggard and hopeless. They, who have beaten down
+The stale despair of night, must now renew
+Their desolation in the truce of dawn,
+Murdering the livid hours that grope for peace.
+
+Yet these, who cling to life with stubborn hands,
+Can grin through storms of death and find a gap
+In the clawed, cruel tangles of his defence.
+They march from safety, and the bird-sung joy
+Of grass-green thickets, to the land where all
+Is ruin, and nothing blossoms but the sky
+That hastens over them where they endure
+Sad, smoking, flat horizons, reeking woods,
+And foundered trench-lines volleying doom for doom.
+
+O my brave brown companions, when your souls
+Flock silently away, and the eyeless dead,
+Shame the wild beast of battle on the ridge,
+Death will stand grieving in that field of war
+Since your unvanquished hardihood is spent.
+And through some mooned Valhalla there will pass
+Battalions and battalions, scarred from hell;
+The unreturning army that was youth;
+The legions who have suffered and are dust.
+
+
+DREAMERS
+
+Soldiers are citizens of death's gray land,
+  Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.
+In the great hour of destiny they stand,
+  Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
+Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
+  Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
+Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
+  They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.
+
+I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
+  And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
+Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
+  And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
+Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
+  And going to the office in the train.
+
+
+THE REDEEMER
+
+Darkness: the rain sluiced down; the mire was deep;
+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.
+
+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 shine.
+
+No thorny crown, only a woollen cap
+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.
+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 some one flung his burden in the muck,
+Mumbling: "O Christ Almighty, now I'm stuck!"
+
+
+TRENCH DUTY
+
+Shaken from sleep, and numbed and scarce awake,
+Out in the trench with three hours' watch to take,
+I blunder through the splashing mirk; and then
+Hear the gruff muttering voices of the men
+Crouching in cabins candle-chinked with light.
+Hark! There's the big bombardment on our right
+Rumbling and bumping; and the dark's a glare
+Of flickering horror in the sectors where
+We raid the Boche; men waiting, stiff and chilled,
+Or crawling on their bellies through the wire.
+"What? Stretcher-bearers wanted? Some one killed?"
+Five minutes ago I heard a sniper fire:
+Why did he do it?... Starlight overhead--
+Blank stars. I'm wide-awake; and some chap's dead.
+
+
+WIRERS
+
+"Pass it along, the wiring party's going out"--
+And yawning sentries mumble, "Wirers going out."
+Unravelling; twisting; hammering stakes with muffled thud,
+They toil with stealthy haste and anger in their blood.
+
+The Boche sends up a flare. Black forms stand rigid there,
+Stock-still like posts; then darkness, and the clumsy ghosts
+Stride hither and thither, whispering, tripped by clutching snare
+Of snags and tangles.
+               Ghastly dawn with vaporous coasts
+Gleams desolate along the sky, night's misery ended.
+
+Young Hughes was badly hit; I heard him carried away,
+Moaning at every lurch; no doubt he'll die to-day.
+But _we_ can say the front-line wire's been safely mended.
+
+
+BREAK OF DAY
+
+There seemed a smell of autumn in the air
+At the bleak end of night; he shivered there
+In a dank, musty dug-out where he lay,
+Legs wrapped in sand-bags,--lumps of chalk and clay
+Spattering his face. Dry-mouthed, he thought, "To-day
+We start the damned attack; and, Lord knows why,
+Zero's at nine; how bloody if I'm done in
+Under the freedom of that morning sky!"
+And then he coughed and dozed, cursing the din.
+
+Was it the ghost of autumn in that smell
+Of underground, or God's blank heart grown kind,
+That sent a happy dream to him in hell?--
+Where men are crushed like clods, and crawl to find
+Some crater for their wretchedness; who lie
+In outcast immolation, doomed to die
+Far from clean things or any hope of cheer,
+Cowed anger in their eyes, till darkness brims
+And roars into their heads, and they can hear
+Old childish talk, and tags of foolish hymns.
+
+He sniffs the chilly air; (his dreaming starts).
+He's riding in a dusty Sussex lane
+In quiet September; slowly night departs;
+And he's a living soul, absolved from pain.
+Beyond the brambled fences where he goes
+Are glimmering fields with harvest piled in sheaves,
+And tree-tops dark against the stars grown pale;
+Then, clear and shrill, a distant farm-cock crows;
+And there's a wall of mist along the vale
+Where willows shake their watery-sounding leaves.
+He gazes on it all, and scarce believes
+That earth is telling its old peaceful tale;
+He thanks the blessed world that he was born....
+Then, far away, a lonely note of the horn.
+
+They're drawing the Big Wood! Unlatch the gate,
+And set Golumpus going on the grass:
+_He_ knows the corner where it's best to wait
+And hear the crashing woodland chorus pass;
+The corner where old foxes make their track
+To the Long Spinney; that's the place to be.
+The bracken shakes below an ivied tree,
+And then a cub looks out; and "Tally-o-back!"
+He bawls, and swings his thong with volleying crack,--
+All the clean thrill of autumn in his blood,
+And hunting surging through him like a flood
+In joyous welcome from the untroubled past;
+While the war drifts away, forgotten at last.
+
+Now a red, sleepy sun above the rim
+Of twilight stares along the quiet weald,
+And the kind, simple country shines revealed
+In solitudes of peace, no longer dim.
+The old horse lifts his face and thanks the light,
+Then stretches down his head to crop the green.
+All things that he has loved are in his sight;
+The places where his happiness has been
+Are in his eyes, his heart, and they are good.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hark! there's the horn: they're drawing the Big Wood.
+
+
+A WORKING PARTY
+
+Three hours ago he blundered up the trench,
+Sliding and poising, groping with his boots;
+Sometimes he tripped and lurched against the walls
+With hands that pawed the sodden bags of chalk.
+He couldn't see the man who walked in front;
+Only he heard the drum and rattle of feet
+Stepping along the trench-boards,--often splashing
+Wretchedly where the sludge was ankle-deep.
+
+Voices would grunt, "Keep to your right,--make way!"
+When squeezing past the men from the front-line:
+White faces peered, puffing a point of red;
+Candles and braziers glinted through the chinks
+And curtain-flaps of dug-outs; then the gloom
+Swallowed his sense of sight; he stooped and swore
+Because a sagging wire had caught his neck.
+A flare went up; the shining whiteness spread
+And flickered upward, showing nimble rats,
+And mounds of glimmering sand-bags, bleached with rain;
+Then the slow, silver moment died in dark.
+
+The wind came posting by with chilly gusts
+And buffeting at corners, piping thin
+And dreary through the crannies; rifle-shots
+Would split and crack and sing along the night,
+And shells came calmly through the drizzling air
+To burst with hollow bang below the hill.
+
+Three hours ago he stumbled up the trench;
+Now he will never walk that road again:
+He must be carried back, a jolting lump
+Beyond all need of tenderness and care;
+A nine-stone corpse with nothing more to do.
+
+He was a young man with a meagre wife
+And two pale children in a Midland town;
+He showed the photograph to all his mates;
+And they considered him a decent chap
+Who did his work and hadn't much to say,
+And always laughed at other people's jokes
+Because he hadn't any of his own.
+
+That night, when he was busy at his job
+Of piling bags along the parapet,
+He thought how slow time went, stamping his feet,
+And blowing on his fingers, pinched with cold.
+
+He thought of getting back by half-past twelve,
+And tot of rum to send him warm to sleep
+In draughty dug-out frowsty with the fumes
+Of coke, and full of snoring, weary men.
+
+He pushed another bag along the top,
+Craning his body outward; then a flare
+Gave one white glimpse of No Man's Land and wire;
+And as he dropped his head the instant split
+His startled life with lead, and all went out.
+
+
+STAND-TO: GOOD FRIDAY MORNING
+
+I'd been on duty from two till four.
+I went and stared at the dug-out door.
+Down in the frowst I heard them snore.
+"Stand-to!" Somebody grunted and swore.
+  Dawn was misty; the skies were still;
+  Larks were singing, discordant, shrill;
+  _They_ seemed happy; but _I_ felt ill.
+Deep in water I splashed my way
+Up the trench to our bogged front line.
+Rain had fallen the whole damned night.
+O Jesus, send me a wound to-day,
+And I'll believe in Your bread and wine,
+And get my bloody old sins washed white!
+
+
+"IN THE PINK"
+
+So Davies wrote: "This leaves me in the pink."
+Then scrawled his name: "Your loving sweetheart, Willie."
+With crosses for a hug. He'd had a drink
+Of rum and tea; and, though the barn was chilly,
+For once his blood ran warm; he had pay to spend.
+Winter was passing; soon the year would mend.
+
+He couldn't sleep that night. Stiff in the dark
+He groaned and thought of Sundays at the farm,
+When he'd go out as cheerful as a lark
+In his best suit to wander arm-in-arm
+With brown-eyed Gwen, and whisper in her ear
+The simple, silly things she liked to hear.
+
+And then he thought: to-morrow night we trudge
+Up to the trenches, and my boots are rotten.
+Five miles of stodgy clay and freezing sludge,
+And everything but wretchedness forgotten.
+To-night he's in the pink; but soon he'll die.
+And still the war goes on; _he_ don't know why.
+
+
+THE HERO
+
+"Jack fell as he'd have wished," the Mother said,
+And folded up the letter that she'd read.
+"The Colonel writes so nicely." Something broke
+In the tired voice that quavered to a choke.
+She half looked up. "We mothers are so proud
+Of our dead soldiers." Then her face was bowed.
+
+Quietly the Brother Officer went out.
+He'd told the poor old dear some gallant lies
+That she would nourish all her days, no doubt.
+For while he coughed and mumbled, her weak eyes
+Had shone with gentle triumph, brimmed with joy,
+Because he'd been so brave, her glorious boy.
+
+He thought how "Jack," cold-footed, useless swine,
+Had panicked down the trench that night the mine
+Went up at Wicked Corner; how he'd tried
+To get sent home; and how, at last, he died,
+Blown to small bits. And no one seemed to care
+Except that lonely woman with white hair.
+
+
+BEFORE THE BATTLE
+
+Music of whispering trees
+Hushed by the broad-winged breeze
+Where shaken water gleams;
+And evening radiance falling
+With reedy bird-notes calling.
+O bear me safe through dark, you low-voiced streams.
+
+I have no need to pray
+That fear may pass away;
+I scorn the growl and rumble of the fight
+That summons me from cool
+Silence of marsh and pool,
+And yellow lilies islanded in light.
+O river of stars and shadows, lead me through the night.
+
+_June 25th, 1916._
+
+
+THE ROAD
+
+The road is thronged with women; soldiers pass
+And halt, but never see them; yet they're here--
+A patient crowd along the sodden grass,
+Silent, worn out with waiting, sick with fear.
+The road goes crawling up a long hillside,
+All ruts and stones and sludge, and the emptied dregs
+Of battle thrown in heaps. Here where they died
+Are stretched big-bellied horses with stiff legs;
+And dead men, bloody-fingered from the fight,
+Stare up at caverned darkness winking white.
+
+You in the bomb-scorched kilt, poor sprawling Jock,
+You tottered here and fell, and stumbled on,
+Half dazed for want of sleep. No dream could mock
+Your reeling brain with comforts lost and gone.
+You did not feel her arms about your knees,
+Her blind caress, her lips upon your head:
+Too tired for thoughts of home and love and ease,
+The road would serve you well enough for bed.
+
+
+TWO HUNDRED YEARS AFTER
+
+Trudging by Corbie Ridge one winter's night,
+(Unless old, hearsay memories tricked his sight),
+Along the pallid edge of the quiet sky
+He watched a nosing lorry grinding on,
+And straggling files of men; when these were gone,
+A double limber and six mules went by,
+Hauling the rations up through ruts and mud
+To trench-lines digged two hundred years ago.
+Then darkness hid them with a rainy scud,
+And soon he saw the village lights below.
+
+But when he'd told his tale, an old man said
+That _he'd_ seen soldiers pass along that hill;
+"Poor, silent things, they were the English dead
+Who came to fight in France and got their fill."
+
+
+THE DREAM
+
+I
+
+Moonlight and dew-drenched blossom, and the scent
+Of summer gardens; these can bring you all
+Those dreams that in the starlit silence fall:
+Sweet songs are full of odours.
+                                While I went
+Last night in drizzling dusk along a lane,
+I passed a squalid farm; from byre and midden
+Came the rank smell that brought me once again
+A dream of war that in the past was hidden.
+
+II
+
+Up a disconsolate straggling village street
+I saw the tired troops trudge: I heard their feet.
+The cheery Q.M.S. was there to meet
+And guide our Company in....
+                             I watched them stumble.
+Into some crazy hovel, too beat to grumble;
+Saw them file inward, slipping from their backs
+Rifles, equipment, packs.
+
+On filthy straw they sit in the gloom, each face
+Bowed to patched, sodden boots they must unlace,
+While the wind chills their sweat through chinks and cracks.
+
+III
+
+I'm looking at their blistered feet; young Jones
+Stares up at me, mud-splashed and white and jaded;
+Out of his eyes the morning light has faded.
+Old soldiers with three winters in their bones
+Puff their damp Woodbines, whistle, stretch their toes
+_They_ can still grin at me, for each of 'em knows
+That I'm as tired as they are....
+                                  Can they guess
+The secret burden that is always mine?--
+Pride in their courage; pity for their distress;
+And burning bitterness
+That I must take them to the accursed Line.
+
+IV
+
+I cannot hear their voices, but I see
+Dim candles in the barn: they gulp their tea,
+And soon they'll sleep like logs. Ten miles away
+The battle winks and thuds in blundering strife.
+And I must lead them nearer, day by day,
+To the foul beast of war that bludgeons life.
+
+
+AT CARNOY
+
+Down in the hollow there's the whole Brigade
+Camped in four groups: through twilight falling slow
+I hear a sound of mouth-organs, ill-played,
+And murmur of voices, gruff, confused, and low.
+Crouched among thistle-tufts I've watched the glow
+Of a blurred orange sunset flare and fade;
+And I'm content. To-morrow we must go
+To take some cursed Wood.... O world God made!
+
+_July 3rd, 1916._
+
+
+BATTALION RELIEF
+
+"_Fall in! Now, get a move on!_" (Curse the rain.)
+We splash away along the straggling village,
+Out to the flat rich country green with June....
+And sunset flares across wet crops and tillage,
+Blazing with splendour-patches. Harvest soon
+Up in the Line. "_Perhaps the War'll be done
+By Christmas-time. Keep smiling then, old son!_"
+
+Here's the Canal: it's dusk; we cross the bridge.
+"_Lead on there by platoons._" The Line's a-glare
+With shell-fire through the poplars; distant rattle
+Of rifles and machine-guns. "_Fritz is there!
+Christ, ain't it lively, Sergeant? Is't a battle?_"
+More rain: the lightning blinks, and thunder rumbles.
+"There's overhead artillery," some chap grumbles.
+
+"_What's all this mob, by the cross-road?_" (The guides)....
+"_Lead on with Number One_" (And off they go.)
+
+"_Three-minute intervals._" ... Poor blundering files,
+Sweating and blindly burdened; who's to know
+If death will catch them in those two dark miles?
+(More rain.) "_Lead on, Headquarters._"
+                               (That's the lot.)
+"_Who's that? O, Sergeant-major; don't get shot!
+And tell me, have we won this war or not?_"
+
+
+THE DUG-OUT
+
+Why do you lie with your legs ungainly huddled,
+And one arm bent across your sullen cold
+Exhausted face? It hurts my heart to watch you,
+Deep-shadow'd from the candle's guttering gold;
+And you wonder why I shake you by the shoulder;
+Drowsy, you mumble and sigh and turn your head....
+_You are too young to fall asleep for ever;
+And when you sleep you remind me of the dead._
+
+
+THE REAR-GUARD
+
+(Hindenburg Line, April 1917.)
+
+Groping along the tunnel, step by step,
+He winked his prying torch with patching glare
+From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air.
+
+Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes too vague to know,
+A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed;
+And he, exploring fifty feet below
+The rosy gloom of battle overhead.
+
+Tripping, he grabbed the wall; saw some one lie
+Humped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug,
+And stooped to give the sleeper's arm a tug.
+"I'm looking for headquarters." No reply.
+"God blast your neck!" (For days he'd had no sleep,)
+"Get up and guide me through this stinking place."
+Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap,
+And flashed his beam across the livid face
+Terribly glaring up, whose eyes yet wore
+Agony dying hard ten days before;
+And fists of fingers clutched a blackening wound.
+
+Alone he staggered on until he found
+Dawn's ghost that filtered down a shafted stair
+To the dazed, muttering creatures underground
+Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound.
+At last, with sweat of horror in his hair,
+He climbed through darkness to the twilight air,
+Unloading hell behind him step by step.
+
+
+I STOOD WITH THE DEAD
+
+I stood with the Dead, so forsaken and still:
+  When dawn was grey I stood with the Dead.
+And my slow heart said, "You must kill; you must kill:
+  Soldier, soldier, morning is red."
+
+On the shapes of the slain in their crumpled disgrace
+  I stared for a while through the thin cold rain....
+"O lad that I loved, there is rain on your face,
+  And your eyes are blurred and sick like the plain."
+
+I stood with the Dead.... They were dead; they were dead;
+  My heart and my head beat a march of dismay;
+And gusts of the wind came dulled by the guns....
+  "Fall in!" I shouted; "Fall in for your pay!"
+
+
+SUICIDE IN TRENCHES
+
+I knew a simple soldier boy
+Who grinned at life in empty joy,
+Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
+And whistled early with the lark.
+
+In winter trenches, cowed and glum
+With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
+He put a bullet through his brain.
+No one spoke of him again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
+Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
+Sneak home and pray you'll never know
+The hell where youth and laughter go.
+
+
+ATTACK
+
+At dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun
+In the wild purple of the glowering sun
+Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud
+The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one,
+Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire.
+The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed
+With bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear,
+Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire.
+Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear,
+They leave their trenches, going over the top,
+While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists,
+And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists,
+Flounders in mud. O Jesu, make it stop!
+
+
+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,
+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
+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;
+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.
+
+
+
+THE EFFECT
+
+     "The effect of our bombardment was terrific. One man told me
+     he had never seen so many dead before."
+
+     _War Correspondent._
+
+"_He'd never seen so many dead before._"
+They sprawled in yellow daylight while he swore
+And gasped and lugged his everlasting load
+Of bombs along what once had been a road.
+"_How peaceful are the dead._"
+Who put that silly gag in some one's head?
+
+"_He'd never seen so many dead before._"
+The lilting words danced up and down his brain,
+While corpses jumped and capered in the rain.
+No, no; he wouldn't count them any more....
+The dead have done with pain:
+They've choked; they can't come back to life again.
+
+When Dick was killed last week he looked like that,
+Flapping along the fire-step like a fish,
+After the blazing crump had knocked him flat....
+"_How many dead? As many as ever you wish.
+Don't count 'em; they're too many.
+Who'll buy my nice fresh corpses, two a penny?_"
+
+
+REMORSE
+
+Lost in the swamp and welter of the pit,
+He flounders off the duck-boards; only he knows
+Each flash and spouting crash,--each instant lit
+When gloom reveals the streaming rain. He goes
+Heavily, blindly on. And, while he blunders,
+"Could anything be worse than this?"--he wonders,
+Remembering how he saw those Germans run,
+Screaming for mercy among the stumps of trees:
+Green-faced, they dodged and darted: there was one
+Livid with terror, clutching at his knees....
+Our chaps were sticking 'em like pigs.... "O hell!"
+He thought--"there's things in war one dare not tell
+Poor father sitting safe at home, who reads
+Of dying heroes and their deathless deeds."
+
+
+IN AN UNDERGROUND DRESSING-STATION
+
+Quietly they set their burden down: he tried
+To grin; moaned; moved his head from side to side.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He gripped the stretcher; stiffened; glared; and screamed,
+"O put my leg down, doctor, do!" (He'd got
+A bullet in his ankle; and he'd been shot
+Horribly through the guts.) The surgeon seemed
+So kind and gentle, saying, above that crying,
+"You _must_ keep still, my lad." But he was dying.
+
+
+DIED OF WOUNDS
+
+His wet, white face and miserable eyes
+Brought nurses to him more than groans and sighs:
+But hoarse and low and rapid rose and fell
+His troubled voice: he did the business well.
+
+The ward grew dark; but he was still complaining,
+And calling out for "Dickie." "Curse the Wood!
+It's time to go; O Christ, and what's the good?--
+We'll never take it; and it's always raining."
+
+I wondered where he'd been; then heard him shout,
+"They snipe like hell! O Dickie, don't go out" ...
+I fell asleep ... next morning he was dead;
+And some Slight Wound lay smiling on his bed.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+"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 comrade's 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;
+And Bert's gone syphilitic: 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!"
+
+
+BASE DETAILS
+
+If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,
+  I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
+And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
+  You'd see me with my puffy petulant face,
+Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
+  Reading the Roll of Honour. "Poor young chap,"
+I'd say--"I used to know his father well;
+  Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap."
+And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
+I'd toddle safely home and die--in bed.
+
+
+LAMENTATIONS
+
+I found him in a guard-room at the Base.
+From the blind darkness I had heard his crying
+And blundered in. With puzzled, patient face
+A sergeant watched him; it was no good trying
+To stop it; for he howled and beat his chest.
+And, all because his brother had gone West,
+Raved at the bleeding war; his rampant grief
+Moaned, shouted, sobbed, and choked, while he was kneeling
+Half-naked on the floor. In my belief
+Such men have lost all patriotic feeling.
+
+
+THE GENERAL
+
+"Good-morning; good-morning!" the General said
+When we met him last week on our way to the Line,
+Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead,
+And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
+"He's a cheery old card," grunted Harry to Jack
+As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But he did for them both by his plan of attack.
+
+
+HOW TO DIE
+
+Dark clouds are smouldering into red
+  While down the craters morning burns.
+The dying soldier shifts his head
+  To watch the glory that returns:
+He lifts his fingers toward the skies
+  Where holy brightness breaks in flame;
+Radiance reflected in his eyes,
+  And on his lips a whispered name.
+
+You'd think, to hear some people talk,
+  That lads go West with sobs and curses,
+And sullen faces white as chalk,
+  Hankering for wreaths and tombs and hearses.
+But they've been taught the way to do it
+  Like Christian soldiers; not with haste
+And shuddering groans; but passing through it
+  With due regard for decent taste.
+
+
+EDITORIAL IMPRESSION
+
+He seemed so certain "all was going well,"
+As he discussed the glorious time he'd had
+While visiting the trenches.
+                             "One can tell
+You've gathered big impressions!" grinned the lad
+Who'd been severely wounded in the back
+In some wiped-out impossible Attack.
+"Impressions? Yes, most vivid! I am writing
+A little book called _Europe on the Rack_,
+Based on notes made while witnessing the fighting.
+I hope I've caught the feeling of 'the Line,'
+And the amazing spirit of the troops.
+By Jove, those flying-chaps of ours are fine!
+I watched one daring beggar looping loops,
+Soaring and diving like some bird of prey.
+And through it all I felt that splendour shine
+Which makes us win."
+                     The soldier sipped his wine.
+"Ah, yes, but it's the Press that leads the way!"
+
+
+FIGHT TO A FINISH
+
+The boys came back. Bands played and flags were flying,
+  And Yellow-Pressmen thronged the sunlit street
+To cheer the soldiers who'd refrained from dying,
+  And hear the music of returning feet.
+"Of all the thrills and ardours War has brought,
+This moment is the finest." (So they thought.)
+
+Snapping their bayonets on to charge the mob,
+  Grim Fusiliers broke ranks with glint of steel.
+At last the boys had found a cushy job.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  I heard the Yellow-Pressmen grunt and squeal;
+And with my trusty bombers turned and went
+To clear those Junkers out of Parliament.
+
+
+ATROCITIES
+
+You told me, in your drunken-boasting mood,
+How once you butchered prisoners. That was good!
+I'm sure you felt no pity while they stood
+Patient and cowed and scared, as prisoners should.
+
+How did you do them in? Come, don't be shy:
+You know I love to hear how Germans die,
+Downstairs in dug-outs. "Camerad!" they cry;
+Then squeal like stoats when bombs begin to fly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And you? I know your record. You went sick
+When orders looked unwholesome: then, with trick
+And lie, you wangled home. And here you are,
+Still talking big and boozing in a bar.
+
+
+THE FATHERS
+
+Snug at the club two fathers sat,
+Gross, goggle-eyed, and full of chat.
+One of them said: "My eldest lad
+Writes cheery letters from Bagdad.
+But Arthur's getting all the fun
+At Arras with his nine-inch gun."
+
+"Yes," wheezed the other, "that's the luck!
+My boy's quite broken-hearted, stuck
+In England training all this year.
+Still, if there's truth in what we hear,
+The Huns intend to ask for more
+  Before they bolt across the Rhine."
+I watched them toddle through the door--
+  These impotent old friends of mine.
+
+
+"BLIGHTERS"
+
+The house is crammed: tier beyond tier they grin
+And cackle at the Show, while prancing ranks
+Of harlots shrill the chorus, drunk with din;
+"We're sure the Kaiser loves the dear old Tanks!"
+
+I'd like to see a Tank come down the stalls,
+Lurching to rag-time tunes, or "Home, sweet Home,"--
+And there'd be no more jokes in Music-halls
+To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume.
+
+
+GLORY OF WOMEN
+
+You love us when we're heroes, home on leave,
+Or wounded in a mentionable place.
+You worship decorations; you believe
+That chivalry redeems the war's disgrace.
+You make us shells. You listen with delight,
+By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled.
+You crown our distant ardours while we fight,
+And mourn our laurelled memories when we're killed.
+
+You can't believe that British troops "retire"
+When hell's last horror breaks them, and they run,
+Trampling the terrible corpses--blind with blood.
+_O German mother dreaming by the fire,
+While you are knitting socks to send your son
+His face is trodden deeper in the mud._
+
+
+THEIR FRAILTY
+
+He's got a Blighty wound. He's safe; and then
+  War's fine and bold and bright.
+She can forget the doomed and prisoned men
+  Who agonize and fight.
+
+He's back in France. She loathes the listless strain
+  And peril of his plight.
+Beseeching Heaven to send him home again,
+  She prays for peace each night.
+
+Husbands and sons and lovers; everywhere
+  They die; War bleeds us white.
+Mothers and wives and sweethearts,--they don't care
+  So long as He's all right.
+
+
+DOES IT MATTER?
+
+Does it matter?--losing your legs?...
+For people will always be kind,
+And you need not show that you mind
+When the others come in after football
+To gobble their muffins and eggs.
+
+Does it matter?--losing your sight?...
+There's such splendid work for the blind;
+And people will always be kind,
+As you sit on the terrace remembering
+And turning your face to the light.
+
+Do they matter?--those dreams from the pit?...
+You can drink and forget and be glad,
+And people won't say that you're mad;
+For they'll know that you've fought for your country,
+And no one will worry a bit.
+
+
+SURVIVORS
+
+No doubt they'll soon get well; the shock and strain
+Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk.
+Of course they're "longing to go out again,"--
+These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk,
+They'll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed
+Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died,--
+Their dreams that drip with murder; and they'll be proud
+Of glorious war that shatter'd all their pride....
+Men who went out to battle, grim and glad;
+Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad.
+
+CRAIGLOCKHART,
+_Oct. 1917._
+
+
+JOY-BELLS
+
+Ring your sweet bells; but let them be farewells
+  To the green-vista'd gladness of the past
+That changed us into soldiers; swing your bells
+  To a joyful chime; but let it be the last.
+
+What means this metal in windy belfries hung
+  When guns are all our need? Dissolve these bells
+Whose tones are tuned for peace: with martial tongue
+  Let them cry doom and storm the sun with shells.
+
+Bells are like fierce-browed prelates who proclaim
+  That "if our Lord returned He'd fight for us."
+So let our bells and bishops do the same,
+  Shoulder to shoulder with the motor-bus.
+
+
+ARMS AND THE MAN
+
+Young Croesus went to pay his call
+On Colonel Sawbones, Caxton Hall:
+And, though his wound was healed and mended,
+He hoped he'd get his leave extended.
+
+The waiting-room was dark and bare.
+He eyed a neat-framed notice there
+Above the fireplace hung to show
+Disabled heroes where to go
+For arms and legs; with scale of price,
+And words of dignified advice
+How officers could get them free.
+
+Elbow or shoulder, hip or knee,--
+Two arms, two legs, though all were lost,
+They'd be restored him free of cost.
+
+Then a Girl-Guide looked in to say,
+"Will Captain Croesus come this way?"
+
+
+WHEN I'M AMONG A BLAZE OF LIGHTS ...
+
+When I'm among a blaze of lights,
+With tawdry music and cigars
+And women dawdling through delights,
+And officers at cocktail bars,--
+Sometimes I think of garden nights
+And elm trees nodding at the stars.
+
+I dream of a small firelit room
+With yellow candles burning straight,
+And glowing pictures in the gloom,
+And kindly books that hold me late.
+Of things like these I love to think
+When I can never be alone:
+Then some one says, "Another drink?"--
+And turns my living heart to stone.
+
+
+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;
+That in good fury he may feel
+The body where he sets his heel
+Quail from your downward darting kiss.
+
+
+THE TOMBSTONE-MAKER
+
+He primmed his loose red mouth, and leaned his head
+Against a sorrowing angel's breast, and said:
+"You'd think so much bereavement would have made
+Unusual big demands upon my trade.
+The War comes cruel hard on some poor folk--
+Unless the fighting stops I'll soon be broke."
+
+He eyed the Cemetery across the road--
+"There's scores of bodies out abroad, this while,
+That should be here by rights; they little know'd
+How they'd get buried in such wretched style."
+
+I told him, with a sympathetic grin,
+That Germans boil dead soldiers down for fat;
+And he was horrified. "What shameful sin!
+O sir, that Christian men should come to that!"
+
+
+THE ONE-LEGGED MAN
+
+Propped on a stick he viewed the August weald;
+Squat orchard trees and oasts with painted cowls;
+A homely, tangled hedge, a corn-stooked field,
+With sound of barking dogs and farmyard fowls.
+
+And he'd come home again to find it more
+Desirable than ever it was before.
+How right it seemed that he should reach the span
+Of comfortable years allowed to man!
+
+Splendid to eat and sleep and choose a wife,
+Safe with his wound, a citizen of life.
+He hobbled blithely through the garden gate,
+And thought; "Thank God they had to amputate!"
+
+
+RETURN OF THE HEROES
+
+    _A lady watches from the crowd,
+    Enthusiastic, flushed, and proud._
+
+"Oh! there's Sir Henry Dudster! Such a splendid leader!
+How pleased he looks! What rows of ribbons on his tunic!
+Such dignity.... Saluting.... (_Wave your flag ... now, Freda!_)...
+Yes, dear, I saw a Prussian General once,--at Munich.
+
+"Here's the next carriage!... Jack was once in Leggit's Corps;
+That's him!... I think the stout one is Sir Godfrey Stoomer.
+They _must_ feel sad to know they can't win any more
+Great victories!... Aren't they glorious men?... so full of humour!"
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+TWELVE MONTHS AFTER
+
+Hullo! here's my platoon, the lot I had last year.
+"The War'll be over soon."
+                           "What 'opes?"
+                                         "No bloody fear!"
+Then, "Number Seven, 'shun! All present and correct."
+They're standing in the sun, impassive and erect.
+Young Gibson with his grin; and Morgan, tired and white;
+Jordan, who's out to win a D.C.M. some night:
+And Hughes that's keen on wiring; and Davies ('79),
+Who always must be firing at the Boche front line.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Old soldiers never die; they simply fide a-why!"
+That's what they used to sing along the roads last spring;
+That's what they used to say before the push began;
+That's where they are to-day, knocked over to a man.
+
+
+TO ANY DEAD OFFICER
+
+Well, how are things in Heaven? I wish you'd say,
+  Because I'd like to know that you're all right.
+Tell me, have you found everlasting day,
+  Or been sucked in by everlasting night?
+For when I shut my eyes your face shows plain;
+  I hear you make some cheery old remark--
+I can rebuild you in my brain,
+  Though you've gone out patrolling in the dark.
+
+You hated tours of trenches; you were proud
+  Of nothing more than having good years to spend;
+Longed to get home and join the careless crowd
+  Of chaps who work in peace with Time for friend.
+That's all washed out now. You're beyond the wire:
+  No earthly chance can send you crawling back;
+You've finished with machine-gun fire--
+  Knocked over in a hopeless dud-attack.
+
+Somehow I always thought you'd get done in,
+  Because you were so desperate keen to live:
+You were all out to try and save your skin,
+  Well knowing how much the world had got to give.
+You joked at shells and talked the usual "shop,"
+  Stuck to your dirty job and did it fine:
+With "Jesus Christ! when _will_ it stop?
+  Three years.... It's hell unless we break their line."
+
+So when they told me you'd been left for dead
+  I wouldn't believe them, feeling it _must_ be true.
+Next week the bloody Roll of Honour said
+  "Wounded and missing"--(That's the thing to do
+When lads are left in shell-holes dying slow,
+  With nothing but blank sky and wounds that ache,
+Moaning for water till they know
+  It's night, and then it's not worth while to wake!)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Good-bye, old lad! Remember me to God,
+  And tell Him that our Politicians swear
+They won't give in till Prussian Rule's been trod
+  Under the Heel of England.... Are you there?...
+
+Yes ... and the War won't end for at least two years;
+But we've got stacks of men ... I'm blind with tears,
+  Staring into the dark. Cheero!
+I wish they'd killed you in a decent show.
+
+
+SICK LEAVE
+
+When I'm asleep, dreaming and lulled and warm,--
+They come, the homeless ones, the noiseless dead.
+While the dim charging breakers of the storm
+Bellow and drone and rumble overhead,
+Out of the gloom they gather about my bed.
+They whisper to my heart; their thoughts are mine.
+"Why are you here with all your watches ended?
+From Ypres to Frise we sought you in the Line."
+In bitter safety I awake, unfriended;
+And while the dawn begins with slashing rain
+I think of the Battalion in the mud.
+"When are you going out to them again?
+Are they not still your brothers through our blood?"
+
+
+BANISHMENT
+
+I am banished from the patient men who fight.
+They smote my heart to pity, built my pride.
+Shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side,
+They trudged away from life's broad wealds of light.
+Their wrongs were mine; and ever in my sight
+They went arrayed in honour. But they died,--
+Not one by one: and mutinous I cried
+To those who sent them out into the night.
+
+The darkness tells how vainly I have striven
+To free them from the pit where they must dwell
+In outcast gloom convulsed and jagged and riven
+By grappling guns. Love drove me to rebel.
+Love drives me back to grope with them through hell;
+And in their tortured eyes I stand forgiven.
+
+
+AUTUMN
+
+October's bellowing anger breaks and cleaves
+The bronzed battalions of the stricken wood
+In whose lament I hear a voice that grieves
+For battle's fruitless harvest, and the feud
+Of outraged men. Their lives are like the leaves
+Scattered in flocks of ruin, tossed and blown
+Along the westering furnace flaring red.
+O martyred youth and manhood overthrown,
+The burden of your wrongs is on my head.
+
+
+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.
+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?
+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,--
+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.
+
+
+TOGETHER
+
+Splashing along the boggy woods all day,
+And over brambled hedge and holding clay,
+I shall not think of him:
+But when the watery fields grow brown and dim,
+And hounds have lost their fox, and horses tire,
+I know that he'll be with me on my way
+Home through the darkness to the evening fire.
+
+He's jumped each stile along the glistening lanes;
+His hand will be upon the mud-soaked reins;
+Hearing the saddle creak,
+He'll wonder if the frost will come next week.
+I shall forget him in the morning light;
+And while we gallop on he will not speak:
+But at the stable-door he'll say good-night.
+
+
+THE HAWTHORN TREE
+
+Not much to me is yonder lane
+  Where I go every day;
+But when there's been a shower of rain
+  And hedge-birds whistle gay,
+I know my lad that's out in France
+  With fearsome things to see
+Would give his eyes for just one glance
+  At our white hawthorn tree.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Not much to me is yonder lane
+  Where _he_ so longs to tread;
+But when there's been a shower of rain
+I think I'll never weep again
+  Until I've heard he's dead.
+
+
+CONCERT PARTY
+
+(EGYPTIAN BASE CAMP)
+
+They are gathering round ...
+Out of the twilight; over the grey-blue sand,
+Shoals of low-jargoning men drift inward to the sound,--
+The jangle and throb of a piano ... tum-ti-tum ...
+Drawn by a lamp, they come
+Out of the glimmering lines of their tents, over the shuffling sand.
+
+O sing us the songs, the songs of our own land,
+You warbling ladies in white.
+Dimness conceals the hunger in our faces,
+This wall of faces risen out of the night,
+These eyes that keep their memories of the places
+So long beyond their sight.
+
+Jaded and gay, the ladies sing; and the chap in brown
+Tilts his grey hat; jaunty and lean and pale,
+He rattles the keys ... some actor-bloke from town ...
+
+"_God send you home_"; and then "_A long, long trail_";
+"_I hear you catting me_"; and "_Dixieland_" ...
+Sing slowly ... now the chorus ... one by one
+We hear them, drink them; till the concert's done.
+Silent, I watch the shadowy mass of soldiers stand.
+Silent, they drift away, over the glimmering sand.
+
+KANTARA,
+_April, 1918._
+
+
+NIGHT ON THE CONVOY
+
+(ALEXANDRIA-MARSEILLES)
+
+Out in the blustering darkness, on the deck
+A gleam of stars looks down. Long blurs of black,
+The lean Destroyers, level with our track,
+Plunging and stealing, watch the perilous way
+Through backward racing seas and caverns of chill spray.
+
+One sentry by the davits, in the gloom
+Stands mute; the boat heaves onward through the night.
+Shrouded is every chink of cabined light:
+And sluiced by floundering waves that hiss and boom
+And crash like guns, the troop-ship shudders ... doom.
+
+Now something at my feet stirs with a sigh;
+And slowly growing used to groping dark,
+I know that the hurricane-deck, down all its length,
+Is heaped and spread with lads in sprawling strength,--
+Blanketed soldiers sleeping. In the stark
+Danger of life at war, they lie so still,
+All prostrate and defenceless, head by head ...
+And I remember Arras, and that hill
+Where dumb with pain I stumbled among the dead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We are going home. The troop-ship, in a thrill
+Of fiery-chamber'd anguish, throbs and rolls.
+We are going home ... victims ... three thousand souls.
+
+_May, 1918._
+
+
+A LETTER HOME
+
+(To Robert Graves)
+
+I
+
+Here I'm sitting in the gloom
+Of my quiet attic room.
+France goes rolling all around,
+Fledged with forest May has crowned.
+And I puff my pipe, calm-hearted,
+Thinking how the fighting started,
+Wondering when we'll ever end it,
+Back to Hell with Kaiser send it,
+Gag the noise, pack up and go,
+Clockwork soldiers in a row.
+I've got better things to do
+Than to waste my time on you.
+
+II
+
+Robert, when I drowse to-night,
+Skirting lawns of sleep to chase
+Shifting dreams in mazy light,
+Somewhere then I'll see your face
+Turning back to bid me follow
+Where I wag my arms and hollo,
+Over hedges hasting after
+Crooked smile and baffling laughter,
+Running tireless, floating, leaping,
+Down your web-hung woods and valleys,
+Garden glooms and hornbeam alleys,
+Where the glowworm stars are peeping,
+Till I find you, quiet as stone
+On a hill-top all alone,
+Staring outward, gravely pondering
+Jumbled leagues of hillock-wandering.
+
+III
+
+You and I have walked together
+In the starving winter weather.
+We've been glad because we knew
+Time's too short and friends are few.
+We've been sad because we missed
+One whose yellow head was kissed
+By the gods, who thought about him
+Till they couldn't do without him.
+Now he's here again; I've seen
+Soldier David dressed in green,
+Standing in a wood that swings
+To the madrigal he sings.
+He's come back, all mirth and glory,
+Like the prince in a fairy story.
+Winter called him far away;
+Blossoms bring him home with May.
+
+IV
+
+Well, I know you'll swear it's true
+That you found him decked in blue
+Striding up through morning-land
+With a cloud on either hand.
+Out in Wales, you'll say, he marches
+Arm-in-arm with oaks and larches;
+Hides all night in hilly nooks,
+Laughs at dawn in tumbling brooks.
+Yet, it's certain, here he teaches
+Outpost-schemes to groups of beeches.
+And I'm sure, as here I stand,
+That he shines through every land,
+That he sings in every place
+Where we're thinking of his face.
+
+V
+
+Robert, there's a war in France;
+Everywhere men bang and blunder,
+Sweat and swear and worship Chance,
+Creep and blink through cannon thunder.
+Rifles crack and bullets flick,
+Sing and hum like hornet-swarms.
+Bones are smashed and buried quick.
+Yet, through stunning battle storms.
+All the while I watch the spark
+Lit to guide me; for I know
+Dreams will triumph, though the dark
+Scowls above me where I go.
+_You_ can hear me; _you_ can mingle
+Radiant folly with my jingle,
+War's a joke for me and you
+While we know such dreams are true!
+
+
+RECONCILIATION
+
+When you are standing at your hero's grave,
+Or near some homeless village where he died,
+Remember, through your heart's rekindling pride,
+The German soldiers who were loyal and brave.
+
+Men fought like brutes; and hideous things were done:
+And you have nourished hatred, harsh and blind.
+But in that Golgotha perhaps you'll find
+The mothers of the men who killed your son.
+
+_November, 1918._
+
+
+MEMORIAL TABLET
+
+(GREAT WAR)
+
+Squire nagged and bullied till I went to fight
+(Under Lord Derby's scheme). I died in hell--
+(They called it Passchendaele); my wound was slight,
+And I was hobbling back, and then a shell
+Burst slick upon the duck-boards; so I fell
+Into the bottomless mud, and lost the light.
+
+In sermon-time, while Squire is in his pew,
+He gives my gilded name a thoughtful stare;
+For though low down upon the list, I'm there:
+"In proud and glorious memory"--that's my due.
+Two bleeding years I fought in France for Squire;
+I suffered anguish that he's never guessed;
+Once I came home on leave; and then went west.
+What greater glory could a man desire?
+
+
+THE DEATH-BED
+
+He drowsed and was aware of silence heaped
+Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls;
+Aqueous like floating rays of amber light,
+Soaring and quivering in the wings of sleep,--
+Silence and safety; and his mortal shore
+Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death.
+
+Some one was holding water to his mouth.
+He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped
+Through crimson gloom to darkness; and forgot
+The opiate throb and ache that was his wound.
+Water--calm, sliding green above the weir;
+Water--a sky-lit alley for his boat,
+Bird-voiced, and bordered with reflected flowers
+And shaken hues of summer: drifting down,
+He dipped contented oars, and sighed, and slept.
+
+Night, with a gust of wind, was in the ward,
+Blowing the curtain to a glimmering curve.
+Night. He was blind; he could not see the stars
+Glinting among the wraiths of wandering cloud;
+Queer blots of colour, purple, scarlet, green,
+Flickered and faded in his drowning eyes.
+
+Rain; he could hear it rustling through the dark;
+Fragrance and passionless music woven as one;
+Warm rain on drooping roses; pattering showers
+That soak the woods; not the harsh rain that sweeps
+Behind the thunder, but a trickling peace
+Gently and slowly washing life away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He stirred, shifting his body; then the pain
+Leaped like a prowling beast, and gripped and tore
+His groping dreams with grinding claws and fangs.
+But some one was beside him; soon he lay
+Shuddering because that evil thing had passed.
+And Death, who'd stepped toward him, paused and stared.
+
+Light many lamps and gather round his bed.
+Lend him your eyes, warm blood, and will to live.
+Speak to him; rouse him; you may save him yet.
+He's young; he hated war; how should he die
+When cruel old campaigners win safe through?
+
+But Death replied: "I choose him." So he went,
+And there was silence in the summer night;
+Silence and safety; and the veils of sleep.
+Then, far away, the thudding of the guns.
+
+
+AFTERMATH
+
+_Have you forgotten yet?..._
+For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
+Like traffic checked awhile at the crossing of city ways:
+And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
+Like clouds in the lit heavens of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
+Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
+_But the past is just the same,--and War's a bloody game,...
+Have you forgotten yet?...
+Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget._
+
+Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz,--
+The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
+Do you remember the rats; and the stench
+Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench,--
+And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
+Do you ever stop and ask, "Is it all going to happen again?"
+
+Do you remember that hour of din before the attack,--
+And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
+As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
+Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
+With dying eyes and lolling heads,--those ashen-grey
+Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?
+
+_Have you forgotten yet?...
+Look up, and swear by the green of the Spring that you'll never forget._
+
+
+SONG-BOOKS OF THE WAR
+
+In fifty years, when peace outshines
+Remembrance of the battle lines,
+Adventurous lads will sigh and cast
+Proud looks upon the plundered past.
+On summer morn or winter's night,
+Their hearts will kindle for the fight,
+Reading a snatch of soldier-song,
+Savage and jaunty, fierce and strong;
+And through the angry marching rhymes
+Of blind regret and haggard mirth,
+They'll envy us the dazzling times
+When sacrifice absolved our earth.
+
+Some ancient man with silver locks
+Will lift his weary face to say:
+"War was a fiend who stopped our clocks
+Although we met him grim and gay."
+And then he'll speak of Haig's last drive,
+Marvelling that any came alive
+Out of the shambles that men built
+And smashed, to cleanse the world of guilt.
+But the boys, with grin and sidelong glance,
+Will think, "Poor grandad's day is done."
+And dream of lads who fought in France
+And lived in time to share the fun.
+
+
+EVERYONE SANG
+
+Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
+And I was filled with such delight
+As prisoned birds must find in freedom
+Winging wildly across the white
+Orchards and dark green fields; on; on; and out of sight.
+
+Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted,
+And beauty came like the setting sun.
+My heart was shaken with tears and horror
+Drifted away ... O but every one
+Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.
+
+_April, 1919._
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon
+by Siegfried Sassoon
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAR POEMS OF SIEGFRIED SASSOON ***
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