Illusions
Trenches in the moonlight, allayed with lulling moonlight
Have had their loveliness; when dancing dewy grasses
Caressed us trampling along their earthy lanes;
When the crucifix hanging over was strangely illumined,
And one imagined music, one even heard the brave bird
In the sighing orchards flute above the weedy well.
There are such moments; forgive me that I throne them,
Nor gloze that there comes soon the nemesis of beauty,
In the fluttering relics that at first glimmer awakened
10 Terror – the no-man’s ditch suddenly forking:
There, the enemy’s best with bombs and brains and courage!
– Soft, swiftly, at once be animal and angel –
But O no, no, they’re Death’s malkins dangling in the wire
For the moon’s interpretation.
Edmund Blunden
The Silent One
Who died on the wires, and hung there, one of two –
Who for his hours of life had chattered through
Infinite lovely chatter of Bucks accent:
Yet faced unbroken wires; stepped over, and went
A noble fool, faithful to his stripes – and ended.
But I weak, hungry, and willing only for the chance
Of line – to fight in the line, lay down under unbroken
Wires, and saw the flashes, and kept unshaken,
Till the politest voice – a finicking accent, said:
10 ‘Do you think you might crawl through, there; there’s a hole‘
Darkness, shot at: I smiled, as politely replied –
‘I’m afraid not, Sir.’ There was no hole no way to be seen
Nothing but chance of death, after tearing of clothes
Kept flat, and watched the darkness, hearing bullets whizzing –
And thought of music – and swore deep heart’s deep oaths
(Polite to God) and retreated and came on again,
Again retreated – and a second time faced the screen.
Ivor Gurney
Moonrise over Battlefield
After the fallen sun the wind was sad
like violins behind immense old walls.
Trees were musicians swaying round the bed
of a woman in gloomy halls.
In privacy of music she made ready
with comb and silver dust and fard;
under her silken vest her little belly
shone like a bladder of sweet lard.
She drifted with the grand air of a punk
10 on Heaven’s streets soliciting white saints;
then lay in bright communion on a cloud-bank
as one who near extreme of pleasure faints.
Then I thought, standing in the ruined trench,
(all around, dead Boche white-shirted lay like sheep),
‘Why does this damned entrancing bitch
seek lovers only among them that sleep?‘
Edgell Rickword
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.
10 I turned in the black ditch, loathing the storm;
A rocket fizzed and burned with blanching flare,
And lit the face of what had been a form
Floundering in mirk. He stood before me there;
I say that he was Christ; stiff in the glare,
And leaning forward from his burdening task,
Both arms supporting it; his eyes on mine
Stared from the woeful head that seemed a mask
Of mortal pain in Hell’s unholy shrine.
No thorny crown, only a woollen cap
20 He wore – an English soldier, white and strong,
Who loved his time like any simple chap,
Good days of work and sport and homely song;
Now he has learned that nights are very long,
And dawn a watching of the windowed sky.
But to the end, unjudging, he’ll endure
Horror and pain, not uncontent to die
That Lancaster on Lune may stand secure.
He faced me, reeling in his weariness,
Shouldering his load of planks, so hard to bear.
30 I say that he was Christ, who wrought to bless
All groping things with freedom bright as air,
And with His mercy washed and made them fair.
Then the flame sank, and all grew black as pitch,
While we began to struggle along the ditch;
And someone flung his burden in the muck,
Mumbling: ‘O Christ Almighty, now I’m stuck!‘
Siegfried Sassoon
Serenade
It was after the Somme, our line was quieter,
Wires mended, neither side daring attacker
Or aggressor to be – the guns equal, the wires a thick hedge,
Where there sounded, (O past days for ever confounded!)
The tune of Schubert which belonged to days mathematical,
Effort of spirit bearing fruit worthy, actual.
The gramophone for an hour was my quiet’s mocker,
Until I cried, ‘Give us “Heldenleben’, “Heldenleben’.‘
The Gloucesters cried out ‘Strauss is our favourite wir haben
10 Sich geliebt‘. So silence fell, Aubers front slept,
And the sentries an unsentimental silence kept.
True, the size of the rum ration was still a shocker
But at last over Aubers the majesty of the dawn’s veil swept.
Ivor Gurney
Behind the Lines
Returning, We Hear The Larks
Sombre the night is:
And though we have our lives, we know
What sinister threat lurks there.
Dragging these anguished limbs, we only know
This poison-blasted track opens on our camp –
On a little safe sleep.
But hark! Joy – joy – strange joy.
Lo! Heights of night ringing with unseen larks:
Music showering our upturned listening faces.
10 Death could drop from the dark
As easily as song –
But song only dropped,
Like a blind man’s dreams on the sand
By dangerous tides;
Like a girl’s dark hair, for she dreams no ruin lies there,
Or her kisses where a serpent hides.
Isaac Rosenberg
After War
One got peace of heart at last, the dark march over,
And the straps slipped, the body felt under roof’s low cover,
Lying slack the body, let sink in straw giving;
And some sweetness, a great sweetness felt in mere living,
And to come to this, haven after sorefooted weeks,
The dark barn roof, and the glows and the wedges and streaks,
Letters from home, dry warmth and still sure rest taken
Sweet to the chilled frame, nerves soothed were so sore shaken.
Ivor Gurney
Grotesque
These are the damned circles Dante trod,
Terrible in hopelessness,
But even skulls have their humour,
An eyeless and sardonic mockery:
And we,
Sitting with streaming eyes in the acrid smoke,
That murks our foul, damp billet,
Chant bitterly, with raucous voices
As a choir of frogs
10
In hideous irony, our patriotic songs.
Frederic Manning
Louse Hunting
Nudes, stark and glistening,
Yelling in lurid glee. Grinning faces
And raging limbs
Whirl over the floor one fire.
For a shirt verminously busy
Yon soldier tore from his throat,
With oaths
Godhead might shrink at, but not the lice,
And soon the shirt was aflare
10 Over the candle he’d lit while we lay.
Then we all sprang up and stript
To hunt the verminous brood.
Soon like a demons’ pantomine
This plunge was raging.
See the silhouettes agape,
See the gibbering shadows
Mixed with the baffled arms on the wall.
See Gargantuan hooked fingers
Pluck in supreme flesh
20 To smutch supreme littleness.
See the merry limbs in that Highland fling
Because some wizard vermin willed
To charm from the quiet this revel
When our ears were half lulled
By the dark music
Blown from Sleep’s trumpet.
Isaac Rosenberg
At Senlis Once
O how comely it was and how reviving
When with clay and with death no longer striving
Down firm roads we came to houses
With women chattering and green grass thriving.
Now though rains in a cataract descended,
We could glow, with our tribulation ended –
Count not days, the present only
Was thought of, how could it ever be expended?
Clad so cleanly, this remnant of poor wretches
10 Picked up life like the hens in orchard ditches,
Gazed on the mill-sails, heard the church-bell,
Found an honest glass all manner of riches.
How they crowded the barn with lusty laughter,
Hailed the pierrots and shook each shadowy rafter,
Even could ridicule their own sufferings,
Sang as though nothing but joy came after!
Edmund Blunden
Crucifix Corner
There was a water dump there, and regimental
Carts came every day to line up and fill full
Those rolling tanks with chlorinated clear mixture;
And curse the mud with vain veritable vexture.
Aveluy across the valley, billets, shacks, ruins,
With time and time a crump there to mark doings.
On New Year’s Eve the marsh glowed tremulous
With rosy mist still holding late marvellous
Sun-glow, the air smelt home; the time breathed home.
10 Noel not put away; new term not yet come,
All things said ‘Severn’, the air was full of those calm meadows;
Transport rattled somewhere in the southern shadows;
Stars that were not strange ruled the most quiet high
Arch of soft sky, starred and most grave to see, most high.
What should break that but gun-noise or last Trump?
But neither came. At sudden, with light jump
Clarinet sang into ‘Hundred Pipers and A’,
Aveluy’s Scottish answered with pipers’ true call
‘Happy we’ve been a’together.’ When nothing
20 Stayed of war-weariness or winter’s loathing,
Crackers with Christmas stockings hung in the heavens,
Gladness split discipline in sixes and sevens,
Hunger ebb’d magically mixed with strange leavens;
Forgotten, forgotten the hard time’s true clothing,
And stars were happy to see Man making Fate plaything.
Ivor Gurney
Vlamertinghe: Passing the Chateau, July, 1917
‘And all her silken flanks with garlands drest’ –
But we are coming to the sacrifice.
Must those have flowers who are not yet gone West?
May those have flowers who live with death and lice?
This must be the floweriest place
That earth allows; the queenly face
Of the proud mansion borrows grace for grace
Spite of those brute guns lowing at the skies.
Bold great daisies’ golden lights,
10 Bubbling roses’ pinks and whites –
Such a gay carpet! poppies by the million;
Such damask! such vermilion!
But if you ask me, mate, the choice of colour
Is scarcely right; this red should have been duller.
Edmund Blunden
Dead Cow Farm
An ancient saga tells us how
In the beginning the First Cow
(For nothing living yet had birth
But Elemental Cow on earth)
Began to lick cold stones and mud:
Under her warm tongue flesh and blood
Blossomed, a miracle to believe:
And so was Adam born, and Eve.
Here now is chaos once again,
10 Primeval mud, cold stones and rain.
Here flesh decays and blood drips red,
And the Cow’s dead, the old Cow’s dead.
Robert Graves
The Sower
(Eastern France)
Familiar, year by year, to the creaking wain
Is the long road’s level ridge above the plain.
To-day a battery comes with horses and guns
On the straight road, that under the poplars runs,
At leisurely pace, the guns with mouths declined,
Harness merrily ringing, and dust behind.
Makers of widows, makers of orphans, they
Pass to their burial business, alert and gay.
But down in the field, where sun has the furrow dried,
10 Is a man who walks in the furrow with even stride.
At every step, with elbow jerked across,
He scatters seed in a quick, deliberate toss,
The immemorial gesture of Man confiding
To Earth, that restores tenfold in a season’s gliding.
He is grave and patient, sowing his children’s bread:
He treads the kindly furrow, nor turns his head.
Laurence Binyon
August, 1918
(In a French Village)
I hear the tinkling of the cattle bell,
In the broad stillness of the afternoon;
High in the cloudless haze the harvest moon
Is pallid as the phantom of a shell.
A girl is drawing water from a well,
I hear the clatter of her wooden shoon;
Two mothers to their sleeping babies croon;
And the hot village feels the drowsy spell.
Sleep, child, the Angel of Death his wings has spread;
10 His engines scour the land, the sea, the sky;
And all the weapons of Hell’s armoury
Are ready for the blood that is their bread;
And many a thousand men to-night must die;
So many that they will not count the Dead.
Maurice Baring
‘Therefore is the name of it called Babel’
And still we stood and stared far down
Into that ember-glowing town,
Which every shaft and shock of fate
Had shorn unto its base. Too late
Came carelessly Serenity.
Now torn and broken houses gaze
On to the rat-infested maze
That once sent up rose-silver haze
To mingle through eternity.
10 The outlines, once so strongly wrought,
Of city walls, are now a thought
Or jest unto the dead who fought…
Foundation for futurity.
The shimmering sands where once there played
Children with pai
nted pail and spade
Are drearily desolate – afraid
To meet night’s dark humanity,
Whose silver cool remakes the dead,
And lays no blame on any head
20 For all the havoc, fire, and lead,
That fell upon us suddenly,
When all we came to know as good
Gave way to Evil’s fiery flood,
And monstrous myths of iron and blood
Seem to obscure God’s clarity.
Deep sunk in sin, this tragic star
Sinks deeper still, and wages war
Against itself; strewn all the seas
With victims of a world disease
30 – and we are left to drink the lees
Of Babel’s direful prophecy.
Osbert Sitwell
War
Where war has left its wake of whitened bone,
Soft stems of summer grass shall wave again,
And all the blood that war has ever strewn
Is but a passing stain.
Lesley Coulson
Comrades of War
Canadians
We marched, and saw a company of Canadians
Their coats weighed eighty pounds at least, we saw them
Faces infinitely grimed in, with almost dead hands
Bent, slouching downwards to billets comfortless and dim.
Cave dwellers last of tribes they seemed, and a pity
Even from us just relieved (much as they were), left us.
Lord, what a land of desolation, what iniquity
Of mere being, there of what youth that country bereft us;
Plagues of evil lay in Death’s Valley we also had
10 Forded that up to the thighs in chill mud
The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry Page 8