Some Desperate Glory

by Max Egremont

  Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow,

  With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause, and renew;

  We watch them wandering up and down the wind’s nonchalance,

  But nothing happens.

  Pale flakes with lingering stealth come feeling for our faces –

  We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed,

  Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed,

  Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses.

  – Is it that we are dying?

  Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires, glozed

  With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there;

  For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs;

  Shutters and doors, all closed: on us the doors are closed, –

  We turn back to our dying.

  Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn;

  Now ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit.

  For God’s invincible spring our love is made afraid;

  Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born,

  For love of God seems dying.

  To-night, this frost will fasten on this mud and us,

  Shrivelling many hands, puckering foreheads crisp.

  The burying-party, picks and shovels in shaking grasp,

  Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,

  But nothing happens.

  WILFRED OWEN

  Dawn on the Somme

  Last night rain fell over the scarred plateau,

  And now from the dark horizon, dazzling, flies

  Arrow on fire-plumed arrow to the skies,

  Shot from the bright arc of Apollo’s bow;

  And from the wild and writhen waste below,

  From flashing pools and mounds lit one by one,

  Oh, is it mist, or are these companies

  Of morning heroes who arise, arise

  With thrusting arms, with limbs and hair aglow,

  Toward the risen god, upon whose brow

  Burns the gold laurel of all victories,

  Hero and heroes’ god, th’ invincible Sun?

  ROBERT NICHOLS

  Arms and the Boy

  Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade

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

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

  And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.

  Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-leads

  Which long to muzzle in the hearts of lads.

  Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth

  Are sharp with sharpness of grief and death.

  For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple.

  There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple;

  And God will grow no talons at his heels,

  Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.

  WILFRED OWEN

  Futility

  Move him into the sun –

  Gently its touch awoke him once,

  At home, whispering of fields half-sown.

  Always it woke him, even in France,

  Until this morning and this snow.

  If anything might rouse him now

  The kind old sun will know.

  Think how it wakes the seeds –

  Woke once the clays of a cold star.

  Are limbs, so dear achieved, are sides

  Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?

  Was it for this the clay grew tall?

  – O what made fatuous sunbeams toil

  To break earth’s sleep at all?

  WILFRED OWEN

  Preface

  This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them.

  Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion or power, except War.

  Above all I am not concerned with Poetry.

  My subject is War, and the pity of War.

  The Poetry is in the pity.

  Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory.

  They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why true Poets must be truthful.

  (If I thought the letter of this book would last, I might have used proper names; but if the spirit of it survives – survives Prussia – my ambition and those names will have achieved fresher fields than Flanders…)

  WILFRED OWEN

  A Terre

  (Being the philosophy of many Soldiers.)

  Sit on the bed; I’m blind, and three parts shell.

  Be careful; can’t shake hands now; never shall.

  Both arms have mutinied against me, – brutes.

  My fingers fidget like ten idle brats.

  I tried to peg out soldierly, – no use!

  One dies of war like any old disease.

  This bandage feels like pennies on my eyes.

  I have my medals? – Discs to make eyes close.

  My glorious ribbons? – Ripped from my own back

  In scarlet shreds. (That’s for your poetry book.)

  A short life and a merry one, my buck!

  We used to say we’d hate to live dead-old, –

  Yet now … I’d willingly be puffy, bald,

  And patriotic. Buffers catch from boys

  At least the jokes hurled at them. I suppose

  Little I’d ever teach a son, but hitting,

  Shooting, war, hunting, all the arts of hurting.

  Well, that’s what I learnt, – that, and making money.

  Your fifty years ahead seem none too many?

  Tell me how long I’ve got? God! For one year

  To help myself to nothing more than air!

  One Spring! Is one too good to spare, too long?

  Spring wind would work its own way to my lung,

  And grow me legs as quick as lilac-shoots.

  My servant’s lamed, but listen how he shouts!

  When I’m lugged out, he’ll still be good for that.

  Here in this mummy-case, you know, I’ve thought

  How well I might have swept his floors for ever.

  I’d ask no nights off when the bustle’s over,

  Enjoying so the dirt. Who’s prejudiced

  Against a grimed hand when his own’s quite dust,

  Less live than specks that in the sun-shafts turn,

  Less warm than dust that mixes with arms’ tan?

  I’d love to be a sweep, now, black as Town,

  Yes, or a muckman. Must I be his load?

  O Life, Life, let me breathe, – a dug-out rat!

  Not worse than ours the lives rats lead –

  Nosing along at night down some safe rut,

  They find a shell-proof home before they rot.

  Dead men may envy living mites in cheese,

  Or good germs even. Microbes have their joys,

  And subdivide, and never come to death.

  Certainly flowers have the easiest time on earth.

  ‘I shall be one with nature, herb, and stone,’

  Shelley would tell me. Shelley would be stunned:

  The dullest Tommy hugs that fancy now.

  ‘Pushing up daisies’ is their creed, you know.

  To grain, then, go my fat, to buds my sap,

  For all the usefulness there is in soap.

  D’you think the Boche will ever stew man-soup?

  Some day, no doubt, if …

  Friend, be very sure

  I shall be better off with plants that share

  More peaceably the meadow and the shower.

  Soft rains will touch me, – as they could touch once,

  And nothing but the sun shall make me ware.

  Your guns may crash around me. I’ll not hear;

  Or, if I wince, I shall not know I wince.

  Don’t take my soul’s poor comfort for your jest.

  Sol
diers may grow a soul when turned to fronds,

  But here the thing’s best left at home with friends.

  My soul’s a little grief, grappling your chest,

  To climb your throat on sobs; easily chased

  On other sighs and wiped by fresher winds.

  Carry my crying spirit till it’s weaned

  To do without what blood remained these wounds.

  WILFRED OWEN

  Disabled

  He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,

  And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,

  Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park

  Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,

  Voices of play and pleasure after day,

  Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.

  About this time Town used to swing so gay

  When glow-lamps budded in the light blue trees,

  And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim, –

  In the old times, before he threw away his knees.

  Now he will never feel again how slim

  Girls’ waists are, or how warm their subtle hands.

  All of them touch him like some queer disease.

  There was an artist silly for his face,

  For it was younger than his youth, last year.

  Now, he is old; his back will never brace;

  He’s lost his colour very far from here,

  Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry,

  And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race

  And leap of purple spurted from his thigh.

  One time he liked a blood-smear down his leg,

  After the matches, carried shoulder-high.

  It was after football, when he’d drunk a peg,

  He thought he’d better join. – He wonders why.

  Someone had said he’d look a god in kilts,

  That’s why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg,

  Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts

  He asked to join. He didn’t have to beg;

  Smiling they wrote his lie: aged nineteen years.

  Germans he scarcely thought of; all their guilt,

  And Austria’s, did not move him. And no fears

  Of Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hilts

  For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes;

  And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears;

  Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits.

  And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers.

  Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal.

  Only a solemn man who brought him fruits

  Thanked him; and then enquired about his soul.

  Now, he will spend a few sick years in institutes,

  And do what things the rules consider wise,

  And take whatever pity they may dole.

  Tonight he noticed how the women’s eyes

  Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.

  How cold and late it is! Why don’t they come

  And put him into bed? Why don’t they come?

  WILFRED OWEN

  Letter to Robert Graves

  24 July 1918

  American Red Cross Hospital, No. 22

  98–99 Lancaster Gate, W.2

  Dear Roberto,

  I’d timed my death in action to the minute

  (The Nation with my deathly verses in it).

  The day told off – 13 – (the month July) –

  The picture planned – O Threshold of the dark!

  And then, the quivering songster failed to die

  Because the bloody Bullet missed its mark.

  Here I am; they would send me back –

  Kind M.O. at Base; Sassoon’s morale grown slack;

  Swallowed all his proud high thoughts and acquiesced.

  O Gate of Lancaster, O Blightyland the Blessed.

  No visitors allowed

  Since Friends arrived in crowd –

  Jabber–Gesture–Jabber–Gesture–Nerves went phut and failed

  After the first afternoon when MarshMoonStreetMeiklejohn

  ArdoursandernduranSitwellitis prevailed,

  Caused complications and set my brain a-hop;

  Sleeplessexasperuicide, O Jesu make it stop!

  But yesterday afternoon my reasoning Rivers ran solemnly in,

  With peace in the pools of his spectacled eyes and a wisely

  Omnipotent grin;

  And I fished in that steady grey stream and decided that I

  After all am no longer the Worm that refuses to die.

  But a gallant and glorious lyrical soldjer;

  Bolder and bolder; as he gets older;

  Shouting ‘Back to the Front

  For a scrimmaging Stunt.’

  (I wish the weather wouldn’t keep on getting colder.)

  Yes, you can touch my Banker when you need him.

  Why keep a Jewish friend unless you bleed him?

  Oh yes, he’s doing very well and sleeps from Two till Four.

  And there was Jolly Otterleen a knocking at the door,

  But Matron says she mustn’t, not however loud she knocks

  (Though she’s bags of golden Daisies and some Raspberries in a box),

  Be admitted to the wonderful and wild and wobbly-witted

  sarcastic soldier-poet with a plaster on his crown,

  Who pretends he doesn’t know it (he’s the Topic of the Town).

  My God, my God, I’m so excited; I’ve just had a letter

  From Stable who’s commanding the Twenty-Fifth Battalion.

  And my company, he tells me, doing better and better,

  Pinched six Saxons after lunch,

  And bagged machine-guns by the bunch.

  But I – wasn’t there –

  O blast it isn’t fair,

  Because they’ll all be wondering why

  Dotty Captain wasn’t standing by

  When they came marching home.

  But I don’t care; I made them love me

  Although they didn’t want to do it, and I’ve sent them a

  Glorious Gramophone and God send you back to me

  Over the green eviscerating sea –

  And I’m ill and afraid to go back to them because those

  five-nines are so damned awful.

  When you think of them all bursting and you’re lying on your bed,

  With the books you loved and longed for on the table; and your head

  All crammed with village verses about Daffodils and Geese –

  … O Jesu make it cease …

  O Rivers please take me. And make me

  Go back to the war till it break me.

  Some day my brain will go BANG,

  And they’ll say what lovely faces were

  The soldier-lads he sang

  Does this break your heart? What do I care?

  Sassons

  SIEGFRIED SASSOON

  Crickley Hill

  The orchis, trefoil, harebells nod all day,

  High above Gloucester and the Severn Plain.

  Few come there, where the curlew ever and again

  Cries faintly, and no traveller makes stay,

  Since steep the road is,

  And the villages

  Hidden by hedges wonderful in late May.

  At Buire-au-Bois a soldier wandering

  The lanes at evening talked with me and told

  Of gardens summer blessed, of early spring

  In tiny orchards, the uncounted gold

  Strewn in green meadows,

  Clear-cut shadows

  Black on the dust and gray stone mellow and old.

  But these were things I knew, and carelessly

  Heard, while in thought I went with friends on roads

  White in the sun and wandered far to see

  The scented hay come homeward in warm loads.

  Hardly I heeded him;

  While the coloured dim


  Evening brought stars and lights in small abodes.

  When on a sudden, ‘Crickley’ he said. How I started

  At that old darling name of home! and turned

  Fell into a torrent of words warm-hearted

  Till clear above the stars of summer burned

  In velvety smooth skies.

  We shared memories

  And the old raptures from each other learned.

  O sudden steep! O hill towering above!

  Chasm from the road falling suddenly away!

  Sure no two men talked of you with more love

  Than we that tender-coloured ending of day.

  (O tears! Keen pride in you!)

  Feeling the soft dew,

  Walking in thought another Roman way.

  You hills of home, woodlands, white roads and inns

  That star and line our darling land, still keep

  Memory of us; for when first day begins

  We think of you and dream in the first sleep

  Of you and yours –

  Trees, bare rock, flowers

  Daring the blast on Crickley’s distant steep.

  IVOR GURNEY

  AFTERMATH

  AT THE ARMISTICE, the emotion of 1914 seemed far away, after so much pain and so many deaths, and a huge change in the perception of war. That first enthusiasm could easily be shown as absurd. Were Rupert Brooke’s poems now merely a symbol of distant naivety?

  At first it seemed as if Brooke’s war would survive well, partly because Eddie Marsh was quick to build a shrine with the 1918 Collected Poems and memoir. In March 1919, a tablet was unveiled at Rugby – the place to whose values he’d returned at the end – in the form of a medallion of Brooke’s head, looking eager and very young, on a wall of the enormous Victorian chapel. The commander of the doomed Gallipoli expedition, General Sir Ian Hamilton, gave a eulogy, underlining the political significance of those 1914 sonnets. Brooke, Hamilton said, had had every gift – ‘youth, charm, beauty, genius’ – and ‘had it in his magic pen’ to show ‘the significance of the Dardanelles to the people of the empire’. Instead he’d died ‘not with the shout of victory ringing in his ears, but for nothing – so it may have seemed – ah, but not so really’, for his pen had ‘already ennobled the theme’ of war.