Some Desperate Glory

by Max Egremont

  Was thought, of what the look meant with the word

  ‘Home’ as we walked and watched the sunset blurred.

  And then to me the word, only the word,

  ‘Homesick’, as it were playfully occurred:

  No more.

  If I should ever more admit

  Than the mere word I could not endure it

  For a day longer: this captivity

  Must somehow come to an end, else I should be

  Another man, as often now I seem,

  Or this life be only an evil dream.

  EDWARD THOMAS

  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.

  SIEGFRIED SASSOON

  The Festubert Shrine

  A sycamore on either side

  In whose lovely leafage cried

  Hushingly the little winds –

  Thus was Mary’s shrine descried.

  ‘Sixteen Hundred and Twenty-Four’

  Legended above the door,

  ‘Pray, sweet gracious Lady, pray

  For our souls,’ – and nothing more.

  Builded of rude gray stones and these

  Scarred and marred from base to frieze

  With the shrapnel’s pounces – ah,

  Fair she braved War’s gaunt disease:

  Fair she pondered on the strange

  Embitterments of latter change,

  Looking fair towards Festubert,

  Cloven roof and tortured grange.

  Work of carving too there was,

  (Once had been her reredos),

  In this cool and peaceful cell

  That the hoarse guns blared across.

  Twisted oaken pillars graced

  With oaken amaranths interlaced

  In oaken garlandry, had borne

  Her holy niche – and now laid waste.

  Mary, pray for us? O pray!

  In thy dwelling by this way

  What poor folks have knelt to thee!

  We are no less poor than they.

  EDMUND BLUNDEN

  As the Team’s Head-Brass

  As the team’s head-brass flashed out on the turn

  The lovers disappeared into the wood.

  I sat among the boughs of the fallen elm

  That strewed the angle of the fallow, and

  Watched the plough narrowing a yellow square

  Of charlock. Every time the horses turned

  Instead of treading me down, the ploughman leaned

  Upon the handles to say or ask a word,

  About the weather, next about the war.

  Scraping the share he faced towards the wood,

  And screwed along the furrow till the brass flashed

  Once more.

  The blizzard felled the elm whose crest

  I sat in, by a woodpecker’s round hole,

  The ploughman said. ‘When will they take it away?’

  ‘When the war’s over.’ So the talk began –

  One minute and an interval of ten,

  A minute more and the same interval.

  ‘Have you been out?’ ‘No.’ ‘And don’t want to, perhaps?’

  ‘If I could only come back again, I should.

  I could spare an arm, I shouldn’t want to lose

  A leg. If I should lose my head, why, so,

  I should want nothing more … Have many gone

  From here?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Many lost?’ ‘Yes, a good few.

  Only two teams work on the farm this year.

  One of my mates is dead. The second day

  In France they killed him. It was back in March,

  The very night of the blizzard, too. Now if

  He had stayed here we should have moved the tree.’

  ‘And I should not have sat here. Everything

  Would have been different. For it would have been

  Another world.’ ‘Ay, and a better, though

  If we could see all all might seem good.’ Then

  The lovers came out of the wood again:

  The horses started and for the last time

  I watched the clods crumble and topple over

  After the ploughshare and the stumbling team.

  EDWARD THOMAS

  The Sun Used to Shine

  The sun used to shine while we two walked

  Slowly together, paused and started

  Again, and sometimes mused, sometimes talked

  As either pleased, and cheerfully parted

  Each night. We never disagreed

  Which gate to rest on. The to be

  And the late past we gave small heed.

  We turned from men or poetry

  To rumours of the war remote

  Only till both stood disinclined

  For aught but the yellow flavorous coat

  Of an apple wasps had undermined;

  Or a sentry of dark betonies,

  The stateliest of small flowers on earth,

  At the forest verge; or crocuses

  Pale purple as if they had their birth

  In sunless Hades fields. The war

  Came back to mind with the moonrise

  Which soldiers in the east afar

  Beheld then. Nevertheless, our eyes

  Could as well imagine the Crusades

  Or Caesar’s battles. Everything

  To faintness like those rumours fades –

  Like the brook’s water glittering

  Under the moonlight – like those walks

  Now – like us two that took them, and

  The fallen apples, all the talks

  And silences – like memory’s sand

  When the tide covers it late or soon,

  And other men through other flowers

  In those fields under the same moon

  Go talking and have easy hours.

  EDWARD THOMAS

  Break of Day in the Trenches

  The darkness crumbles away.

  It is the same old Druid Time as ever,

  Only a live thing leaps my hand,

  A queer sardonic rat,

  As I pull the parapet’s poppy

  To stick behind my ear.

  Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew

  Your cosmopolitan sympathies.

  Now you have touched this English hand

  You will do the same to a German

  Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure

  To cross the sleeping green between.

  It seems, odd thing, you grin as you pass

  Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,

  Less chanced than you for life,

  Bonds to the whims of murder,

  Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,

  The torn fields of France.

  What do you see in our eyes

  At the shrieking iron and flame

  Hurled through still heavens?

  What quaver – what heart aghast?

  Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins

  Drop, and are ever dropping,

  But mine in my ear is safe –

  Just a little white with the dust.

  ISAAC ROSENBERG

  Strange Service

  Little did I dream, England, that you bore me

  Under the Cotswold Rills beside the water meadows,

  To do you dreadful service, here, beyond your borders

  And your enfolding seas.

  I was a dreamer ever, and bound to your dear service,
<
br />   Meditating deep, I thought on your secret beauty,

  As through a child’s face one may see the clear spirit

  Miraculously shining.

  Your hills not only hills, but friends of mine and kindly,

  Your tiny knolls and orchards hidden beside the river

  Muddy and strongly flowing, with shy and tiny streamlets

  Safe in its bosom.

  Now these are memories only, and your skies and rushy sky-pools

  Fragile mirrors easily broken by moving airs …

  But deep in my heart for ever goes on your daily being,

  And uses consecrate.

  Think on me too, O Mother, who wrest my soul to serve you

  In strange and fearful ways beyond your encircling waters;

  None but you can know my heart, its tears and sacrifice;

  None, but you, repay.

  IVOR GURNEY

  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.

  Someone 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

  Leapt like a prowling beast, and gripped and tore

  His groping dreams with grinding claws and fangs.

  But someone 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.

  SIEGFRIED SASSOON

  The Trumpet

  Rise up, rise up,

  And, as the trumpet blowing

  Chases the dreams of men,

  As the dawn glowing

  The stars that left unlit

  The land and water,

  Rise up and scatter

  The dew that covers

  The print of last night’s lovers –

  Scatter it, scatter it!

  While you are listening

  To the clear horn,

  Forget, men, everything

  On this earth newborn,

  Except that it is lovelier

  Than any mysteries.

  Open your eyes to the air

  That has washed the eyes of the stars

  Through all the dewy night:

  Up with the light,

  To the old wars;

  Arise, arise!

  EDWARD THOMAS

  Lights Out

  I have come to the borders of sleep,

  The unfathomable deep

  Forest where all must lose

  Their way, however straight,

  Or winding, soon or late;

  They cannot choose.

  Many a road and track

  That, since the dawn’s first crack,

  Up to the forest brink,

  Deceived the travellers,

  Suddenly now blurs,

  And in they sink.

  Here love ends,

  Despair, ambition ends,

  All pleasure and all trouble,

  Although most sweet or bitter,

  Here ends in sleep that is sweeter

  Than tasks most noble.

  There is not any book

  Or face of dearest look

  That I would not turn from now

  To go into the unknown

  I must enter and leave alone,

  I know not how.

  The tall forest towers;

  Its cloudy foliage lowers

  Ahead, shelf above shelf;

  Its silence I hear and obey

  That I may lose my way

  And myself.

  EDWARD THOMAS

  Bach and the Sentry

  Watching the dark my spirit rose in flood

  On that most dearest Prelude of my delight.

  The low-lying mist lifted its hood,

  The October stars showed nobly in clear night.

  When I return, and to real music-making,

  And play that Prelude, how will it happen then?

  Shall I feel as I felt, a sentry hardly waking,

  With a dull sense of No Man’s Land again?

  IVOR GURNEY

  1917

  TO THE POET David Jones, ‘the wholesale slaughter’ and impersonality of the war’s later years began with the Somme. Previously there’d been a sense of tradition stretching back to the Peninsula, to Marlborough’s campaigns, even to Agincourt. Now the war became more mechanical, harder, more horrifically modern.

  The direction of Britain’s war changed in December 1916 when David Lloyd George, the Minister of Munitions and former Chancellor of the Exchequer, succeeded Asquith – never a natural war leader – as Prime Minister. It was a huge leap for the country to be led by a man who’d not been to a public school or university. Having grown up in a cottage in north Wales, where his uncle was a cobbler, Lloyd George had made a virtue out of this, even exaggerating his early poverty, proclaiming his mission to aid the poor, particularly at the expense of inheritors of great wealth. He owed his advancement not only to his own dynamism but also to a deadlocked war.

  Gallipoli had failed; the Somme battles had gained only a few miles; the Royal Navy had been brought to a dead heat, arguably a defeat, at Jutland; U-boats were menacing British supply routes; the Russians, effective against the Austrians, couldn’t match the Germans who’d conquered Romania and still occupied Belgium and much of northern France. The cold winter further sapped morale.

  The new Prime Minister was not impressed by Douglas Haig and the British High Command, particularly after the Somme. For the planned 1917 spring offensive, Lloyd George infuriated Haig by putting the British army under the temporary control of the persuasive, English-speaking French General Nivelle who’d done well at Verdun.

  The British role was to advance on a front stretching from Bapaume in the south up to Arras. The main force would come from a massive French attack on the Chemin des Dames, a surge uphill against well-dug-in German machine guns. The Germans, through captured papers, knew of the plan. There followed, in March 1917, what seemed like a retreat, as the Germans withdrew, wrecking the country that they left behind, ta
king up positions in the well-fortified so-called Hindenburg Line. This was a strategic move, not a flight. It determined the fate of the Allies’ spring offensive that was meant to win the war.

  In January 1917, Wilfred Owen was with the 2nd Battalion, the Manchester Regiment in the transit camp at Etaples. Here he was hit, during bombing practice, by a fragment which grazed his thumb, letting him coax out one drop of blood, a glimpse of what it was to be a warrior. ‘There is a fine heroic feeling about being in France,’ Owen told his mother on New Year’s Day, ‘and I am in perfect spirits. A tinge of excitement is about me, but excitement is always necessary to my happiness.’ He wrote again ten days later, ‘Have no anxiety. I cannot do a better thing or be in a righter place…’

  He’d been under shellfire in the snow at Bertrancourt by 4 February. The ugliness of the trenches cut into the crimson aestheticism, nurtured by Tailhade and the reading of Wilde. ‘I suppose I can endure cold, and fatigue, and face-to-face death, as well as another; but extra for me there is the universal perversion of Ugliness,’ he told his mother. ‘Hideous landscapes, vile noises, foul language and nothing but foul, even from one’s own mouth (for all are devilridden), everything unnatural, broken, blasted; the distortion of the dead, whose unburiable bodies sit outside the dug-outs all day, all night, the most execrable sights on earth.’ Owen claimed that he’d been too busy surviving to be frightened: ‘I cannot say I felt any fear.’ That day he arrived at Abbeville to take a transport course. Another offensive was only two months away.

  Edward Thomas had his last leave in England over the weekend of 6 January. There was snow and mist round the cottage that his family had taken near High Beech Camp in Essex. He read stories to his children, bathed them in a tub in front of the fire and sang folk songs, showing great tenderness to them yet impatient with Helen his wife, talking briskly about life assurance documents, arguing over possible improvements to the house. After a day in London – away from her – he was loving on their last night, carrying Helen to bed in his greatcoat and saying ‘remember that, whatever happens, all is well between us for ever and ever’. As Edward strode away the next morning, soon invisible in the mist, he called out, ‘Coo-ee!’ and she answered, before running up a hill, hoping to see him but, as she wrote later, ‘There was nothing but the mist and the snow and the silence of death.’ He was in France as an artillery officer by the end of January, near the guns and regretting the absence of birdsong.