Some Desperate Glory

by Max Egremont

EDMUND BLUNDEN

  The Mangel-Bury

  It was after war; Edward Thomas had fallen at Arras –

  I was walking by Gloucester musing on such things

  As fill his verse with goodness; it was February; the long house

  Straw-thatched of the mangels stretched two wide wings;

  And looked as part of the earth heaped up by dead soldiers

  In the most fitting place – along the hedge’s yet-bare lines.

  West spring breathed there early, that none foreign divines.

  Across the flat country the rattling of the cart sounded:

  Heavy of wood, jingling of iron; as he neared me I waited

  For the chance perhaps of heaving at those great rounded

  Ruddy or orange things – and right to be rolled and hefted

  By a body like mine, soldier still, and clean from water.

  Silent he assented; till the cart was drifted

  High with those creatures, so right in size and matter.

  We threw with our bodies swinging; blood in my ears singing;

  His was the thick-set sort of farmer, but well-built –

  Perhaps long before his blood’s name ruled all:

  Watched all things for his own. If my luck had so willed

  Many questions of lordship I had heard him tell – old

  Names, rumours. But my pain to more moving called

  And him to some barn business far in the fifteen acre field.

  IVOR GURNEY

  It is Near Toussaints

  It is near Toussaints, the living and dead will say:

  ‘Have they ended it? What has happened to Gurney?’

  And along the leaf-strewed roads of France many brown shades

  Will go, recalling singing, and a comrade for whom also they

  Had hoped well. His honour them had happier made.

  Curse all that hates good. When I spoke of my breaking

  (Not understood) in London, they imagined of the taking

  Vengeance, and seeing things were different in future.

  (A musician was a cheap, honourable and nice creature.)

  Kept sympathetic silence; heard their packs creaking

  And burst into song – Hilaire Belloc was all our Master.

  On the night of all the dead, they will remember me,

  Pray Michael, Nicholas, Maries lost in Novembery

  River-mist in the old City of our dear love, and batter

  At doors about the farms crying ‘Our war poet is lost’,

  ‘Madame – no bon!’ – and cry his two names, warningly, sombrely.

  IVOR GURNEY

  The Rock Below

  Comes a muttering from the earth

  Where speedwell grows and daisies grow,

  ‘Pluck these weeds up, root and all,

  Search what hides below.’

  Root and all I pluck them out;

  There, close under, I have found

  Stumps of thorn with ancient crooks

  Grappled in the ground.

  I wrench the thorn-stocks from their hold

  To set a rose-bush in that place;

  Love has pleasure in my roses

  For a summer space.

  Yet the bush cries out in grief:

  ‘Our lowest rootlets turn on rock,

  We live in terror of the drought

  Withering crown and stock.’

  I grow angry with my creature,

  Tear it out and see it die;

  Far beneath I strike the stone,

  Jarring hatefully.

  Impotently must I mourn

  Roses never to flower again?

  Are heart and back too slightly built

  For a heaving strain?

  Heave shall break my proud back never,

  Strain shall never burst my heart:

  Steely fingers hook in the crack,

  Up the rock shall start.

  Now from the deep and frightful pit

  Shoots forth the spiring phoenix-tree

  Long despaired in this bleak land,

  Holds the air with boughs, with bland

  Fragrance welcome to the bee,

  With fruits of immortality.

  ROBERT GRAVES

  The Zonnebeke Road

  Morning, if this late withered light can claim

  Some kindred with that merry flame

  Which the young day was wont to fling through space!

  Agony stares from each grey face.

  And yet the day is come; stand down! stand down!

  Your hands unclasp from rifles while you can,

  The frost has pierced them to the bended bone?

  Why see old Stevens there, that iron man,

  Melting the ice to shave his grotesque chin:

  Go ask him, shall we win?

  I never liked this bay, some foolish fear

  Caught me the first time that I came in here;

  That dugout fallen in awakes, perhaps,

  Some formless haunting of some corpse’s chaps.

  True, and wherever we have held the line,

  There were such corners, seeming-saturnine

  For no good cause.

  Now where Haymarket starts,

  There is no place for soldiers with weak hearts;

  The minenwerfers have it to the inch.

  Look, how the snow-dust whisks along the road

  Piteous and silly; the stones themselves must flinch

  In this east wind; the low sky like a load

  Hangs over – a dead-weight. But what a pain

  Must gnaw where its clay cheek

  Crushes the shell-chopped trees that fang the plain –

  The ice-bound throat gulps out a gargoyle shriek.

  That wretched wire before the village line

  Rattles like rusty brambles or dead bine,

  And there the daylight oozes into dun;

  Black pillars, those are trees where roadways run.

  Even Ypres now would warm our souls; fond fool,

  Our tour’s but one night old, seven more to cool!

  O screaming dumbness, O dull clashing death,

  Shreds of dead grass and willows, homes and men,

  Watch as you will, men clench their chattering teeth

  And freeze you back with that one hope, disdain.

  EDMUND BLUNDEN

  First Time In

  After the dread tales and red yarns of the Line

  Anything might have come to us; but the divine

  Afterglow brought us up to a Welsh colony

  Hiding in sandbag ditches, whispering consolatory

  Soft foreign things. Then we were taken in

  To low huts candle-lit, shaded close by slitten

  Oilsheets, and there but boys gave us kind welcome,

  So that we looked out as from the edge of home.

  Sang us Welsh things, and changed all former notions

  To human hopeful things. And the next day’s guns

  Nor any line-pangs ever quite could blot out

  That strangely beautiful entry to War’s rout;

  Candles they gave us, precious and shared over-rations –

  Ulysses found little more in his wanderings without doubt.

  ‘David of the White Rock’, the ‘Slumber Song’ so soft, and that

  Beautiful tune to which roguish words by Welsh pit boys

  Are sung – but never more beautiful than here under the guns’ noise.

  IVOR GURNEY

  Poem for End

  So the last poem is laid flat in its place,

  And Crickley with Crucifix Corner leaves from my face

  Elizabethans and night-working thoughts – of such grace.

  And all the dawns that set my thoughts new to making;

  Or Crickley dusk that the beech leaves stirred to shaking

  Are put aside – there is a book ended; heart aching.

  Joy and sorrow, and all thoughts a poet thinks,

  Walking or turni
ng to music; the wrought-out links

  Of fancy to fancy – by Severn or by Artois brinks.

  Only what’s false in this, blood itself would not save,

  Sweat would not heighten – the dead Master in his grave

  Would my true following of him, my care approve.

  And more than he, I paid the prices of life

  Standing where Rome immortal heard October’s strife,

  A war poet whose right of honour cuts falsehood like a knife.

  War poet – his right is of nobler steel – the careful sword –

  And night walker will not suffer of praise the word

  From the sleepers, the custom-followers, the dead lives unstirred.

  Only, who thought of England as two thousand years

  Must keep of today’s life the proper anger and fears:

  England that was paid for by building and ploughing and tears.

  IVOR GURNEY

  On Passing the New Menin Gate

  Who will remember, passing through this Gate,

  The unheroic Dead who fed the guns?

  Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate, –

  Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?

  Crudely renewed, the Salient holds its own.

  Paid are its dim defenders by this pomp;

  Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone,

  The armies who endured that sullen swamp.

  Here was the world’s worst wound. And here with pride

  ‘Their name liveth for ever,’ the Gateway claims.

  Was ever an immolation so belied

  As these intolerably nameless names?

  Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime

  Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.

  SIEGFRIED SASSOON

  The Bohemians

  Certain people would not clean their buttons,

  Nor polish buckles after latest fashions,

  Preferred their hair long, putties comfortable,

  Barely escaping hanging, indeed hardly able;

  In Bridge and smoking without army cautions

  Spending hours that sped like evil for quickness,

  (While others burnished brasses, earned promotions).

  These were those ones who jested in the trench,

  While others argued of army ways, and wrenched

  What little soul they had still further from shape,

  And died off one by one, or became officers.

  Without the first of dream, the ghost of notions

  Of ever becoming soldiers, or smart and neat,

  Surprised as ever to find the army capable

  Of sounding ‘Lights out’ to break a game of Bridge,

  As to fear candles would set a barn alight:

  In Artois or Picardy they lie – free of useless fashions.

  IVOR GURNEY

  The Watchers

  I heard the challenge ‘Who goes there?’

  Close-kept but mine through midnight air;

  I answered and was recognized

  And passed, and kindly thus advised:

  ‘There’s someone crawlin’ through the grass

  By the red ruin, or there was,

  And them machine guns been a firin’

  All the time the chaps was wirin’,

  So Sir if you’re goin’ out

  You’ll keep your ’ead well down no doubt.’

  When will the stern fine ‘Who goes there?’

  Meet me again in midnight air?

  And the gruff sentry’s kindness, when

  Will kindness have such power again?

  It seems as, now I wake and brood,

  And know my hour’s decrepitude,

  That on some dewy parapet

  The sentry’s spirit gazes yet,

  Who will not speak with altered tone

  When I at last am seen and known.

  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:

  ‘Do you think you might crawl through there: there’s a hole?’ In the afraid

  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 oaths

  (Polite to God) – and retreated and came on again.

  Again retreated – and a second time faced the screen.

  IVOR GURNEY

  I Saw England – July Night

  She was a village

  Of lovely knowledge

  The high roads left her aside, she was forlorn, a maid –

  Water ran there, dusk hid her, she climbed four-wayed.

  Brown-golden windows showed last folk not yet asleep;

  Water ran, was a centre of silence deep,

  Fathomless deeps of pricked sky, almost fathomless

  Hallowed an upward gaze in pale satin of blue.

  And I was happy indeed, of mind, soul, body even

  Having got given

  A sign undoubtful of dear England few

  Doubt, not many have seen,

  That Will Squele he knew and so was shriven.

  Home of Twelfth Night – Edward Thomas by Arras fallen,

  Borrow and Hardy, Sussex tales out of Roman heights callen.

  No madrigals or field-songs to my all reverent whim;

  Till I got back I was dumb.

  IVOR GURNEY

  The Interview

  Death I have often faced

  In the damp trench – or poisoned waste:

  Shell or shot, gas or flying steel, bayonet –

  But only once by one bullet my arm was wet

  With blood. Death faced me there, Death it was that I faced.

  But now by no means may it come to me.

  Mercy of Death noways vouchsafed to pain.

  Were but those times of battle to come again!

  Or even boat-sailing, danger on a mimic inland sea!

  Death moaning, Death flying, shrieking in air.

  Desiring its mark sufficient everywhere – everywhere.

  Interview enough. But now I can not get near

  Such challenge or dear enmity; pain more than fear

  Oppresses me – Would that might come again!

  Death in the narrow trench … or wide in the fields.

  Death in the Reserve, where the earth wild beautiful flowers yields.

  Death met – outfaced – but here: not to be got.

  Prayed for, truly desired, obtained not –

  A lot past dreadfulness, an unhuman lot.

  For never Man was meant to be denied Chance

  Of Ending pain past strength – O for France! For France!

  Death walked freely – one might be sought of him

  Or seek, in twilight or first light of morning dim.

  Death dreadful that scared the cheeks of blood,

  Took friends, spoilt any happy true-human mood,

  Shrieked in the near air – threatened from up on high.

  Dreadful, dreadful. But not to be come by

  Now, confined – no Interview is ever here.

  And worse than Death is known in the spirit of fear.

  Death is a thing desired, never to be had at all –

  Spirit for Death cries, nothing hears; nothing granted he
re. O

  If Mercy would but hear the cry of the spirit grow

  From waking – till Death seems far beyond a right,

  And dark is the spirit has all right to be bright.

  Death is not here – save mercy grant it. When

  Was cruelty such known last among like-and-like men?

  An Interview? It is cried for – and not known –

  Not found. Death absent what thing is truly Man’s own?

  Beaten down continually, continually beaten clean down.

  IVOR GURNEY

  Two Voices

  ‘There’s something in the air,’ he said

  In the farm parlour cool and bare;

  The plain words in his hearers bred

  A tumult, yet in silence there

  All waited; wryly gay, he left the phrase,

  Ordered the march and bade us go our ways.

  ‘We’re going South, man’; as he spoke

  The howitzer with huge ping-bang

  Racked the light hut; as thus he broke

  The death-news, bright the skylarks sang;

  He took his riding-crop and humming went

  Among the apple-trees all bloom and scent.

  Now far withdraws the roaring night

  Which wrecked our flower after the first

  Of those two voices; misty light

  Shrouds Thiepval Wood and all its worst:

  But still ‘There’s something in the air’ I hear,

  And still ‘We’re going South, man,’ deadly near.

  EDMUND BLUNDEN

  Gouzeaucourt: The Deceitful Calm

  How unpurposed, how inconsequential

  Seemed those southern lines when in the pallor

  Of the dying winter

  First we went there!

  Grass thin-waving in the wind approached them,

  Red roofs in the near view feigned survival,

  Lovely mockers, when we

  There took over.

  There war’s holiday seemed, nor though at known times

  Gusts of flame and jingling steel descended

  On the bare tracks, would you

  Picture death there.

  Snow or rime-frost made a solemn silence,

  Bluish darkness wrapped in dangerous safety;