Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated)
Page 962
Northumberland, Lancaster, York,
Durham and Somerset,
Fighting alone, worn to the bone,
But sticking it, sticking it yet.
Never a message of hope,
Never a word of cheer,
Fronting Hill 70’s shell-swept slope,
With the dull, dead plain in our rear;
Always the shriek of the shell,
Always the roar of the burst,
Always the tortures of Hell,
As waiting and wincing we cursed
Our luck, the guns, and the Boche.
When our Corporal shouted “Stand to!”
And I hear some one cry, “Clear the front for the Guards!” —
And the Guards came through.
Our throats they were parched and hot,
But, Lord! if you’d heard the cheer,
Irish, Welsh and Scot,
Coldstream and Grenadier —
Two Brigades, if you please,
Dressing as straight as a hem.
We, we were down on our knees,
Praying for us and for them,
Praying with tear-wet cheek,
Praying with outstretched hand.
Lord! I could speak for a week,
But how could you understand?
How could your cheeks be wet?
Such feelin’s don’t come to you;
But how can me or my mates forget
How the Guards came through?
“Five yards left extend!”
It passed from rank to rank,
And line after line, with never a bend,
And a touch of the London swank.
A trifle of swank and dash,
Cool as a home parade,
Twinkle, glitter and flash,
Flinching never a shade,
With the shrapnel right in their face,
Doing their Hyde Park stunt,
Swinging along at an easy pace,
Arms at the trail, eyes front.
Man! it was great to see!
Man! it was great to do!
It’s a cot, and a hospital ward for me,
But I’ll tell them in Blighty wherever I be,
How the Guards came through.
VICTRIX
How was it then with England?
Her faith was true to her plighted word,
Her strong hand closed on her blunted sword,
Her heart rose high to the foeman’s hate,
She walked with God on the hills of Fate —
And all was well with England.
How was it then with England?
Her soul was wrung with loss and pain,
Her face was grey with her heart’s-blood drain,
But her falcon eyes were hard and bright,
Austere and cold as an ice-cave’s light —
And all was well with England.
How was it then with England?
Little she said to foe or friend,
True, heart true, to the uttermost end,
Her passion cry was the scathe she wrought,
In flame and steel she voiced her thought —
And all was well with England.
How was it then with England?
With drooping sword and bended head,
She turned apart and mourned her dead,
Sad sky above, sad earth beneath,
She walked with God in the Vale of Death —
Ah, woe the day for England!
How is it now with England?
She sees upon her mist-girt path
Dim drifting shapes of fear and wrath.
Hold high the heart! Bend low the knee!
She has been guided, and will be —
And all is well with England.
THOSE OTHERS
Where are those others? — the men who stood
In the first wild spate of the German flood,
And paid full price with their heart’s best blood
For the saving of you and me:
French’s Contemptibles, haggard and lean,
Allenby’s lads of the cavalry screen,
Gunners who fell in Battery L,
And Guardsmen of Landrecies?
Where are those others who fought and fell,
Outmanned, outgunned and scant of shell,
On the deadly curve of the Ypres hell,
Barring the coast to the last?
Where are our laddies who died out there,
From Poelcapelle to Festubert,
When the days grew short and the poplars bare
In the cold November blast?
For us their toil and for us their pain,
The sordid ditch in the sodden plain,
The Flemish fog and the driving rain,
The cold that cramped and froze;
The weary night, the chill bleak day,
When earth was dark and sky was grey,
And the ragged weeds in the dripping clay
Were all God’s world to those.
Where are those others in this glad time,
When the standards wave and the joy-bells chime,
And London stands with outstretched hands
Waving her children in?
Athwart our joy still comes the thought
Of the dear dead boys, whose lives have bought
All that sweet victory has brought
To us who lived to win.
To each his dreams, and mine to me,
But as the shadows fall I see
That ever-glorious company —
The men who bide out there.
Rifleman, Highlander, Fusilier,
Airman and Sapper and Grenadier,
With flaunting banner and wave and cheer,
They flow through the darkening air.
And yours are there, and so are mine,
Rank upon rank and line on line,
With smiling lips and eyes that shine,
And bearing proud and high.
Past they go with their measured tread,
These are the victors, these — the dead!
Ah, sink the knee and bare the head
As the hallowed host goes by!
HAIG IS MOVING
August 1918
Haig is moving!
Three plain words are all that matter,
Mid the gossip and the chatter,
Hopes in speeches, fears in papers,
Pessimistic froth and vapours —
Haig is moving!
Haig is moving!
We can turn from German scheming,
From humanitarian dreaming,
From assertions, contradictions,
Twisted facts and solemn fictions —
Haig is moving!
Haig is moving!
All the weary idle phrases,
Empty blamings, empty praises,
Here’s an end to their recital,
There is only one thing vital —
Haig is moving!
Haig is moving!
He is moving, he is gaining,
And the whole hushed world is straining,
Straining, yearning, for the vision
Of the doom and the decision —
Haig is moving!
THE GUNS IN SUSSEX
Light green of grass and richer green of bush
Slope upwards to the darkest green of fir.
How still! How deathly still! And yet the hush
Shivers and trembles with some subtle stir,
Some far-off throbbing like a muffled drum,
Beaten in broken rhythm oversea,
To play the last funereal march of some
Who die to-day that Europe may be free.
The deep-blue heaven, curving from the green,
Spans with its shimmering arch the flowery zone;
In all God’s earth there is no gentler scene,
And yet I hear that awesome monotone.
Above the circling midge’s piping shrill,
Above all sultry summer sounds, it still
Mutters its ceaseless menaces to me.
And as I listen, all the garden fair
Darkens to plains of misery and death,
And, looking past the roses, I see there
Those sordid furrows with the rising breath
Of all things foul and black. My heart is hot
Within me as I view it, and I cry,
“Better the misery of these men’s lot
Than all the peace that comes to such as I!”
And strange that in the pauses of the sound
I hear the children’s laughter as they roam,
And then their mother calls, and all around
Rise up the gentle murmurs of a home.
But still I gaze afar, and at the sight
My whole soul softens to its heart-felt prayer,
“Spirit of Justice, Thou for whom they fight,
Ah, turn in mercy to our lads out there!
“The froward peoples have deserved Thy wrath,
And on them is the Judgment as of old,
But if they wandered from the hallowed path
Yet is their retribution manifold.
Behold all Europe writhing on the rack,
The sins of fathers grinding down the sons!
How long, O Lord?” He sends no answer back,
But still I hear the mutter of the guns.
YPRES
September, 1915
Push on, my Lord of Würtemberg, across the Flemish Fen!
See where the lure of Ypres calls you!
There’s just one ragged British line of Plumer’s weary men;
It’s true they held you off before, but venture it again,
Come, try your luck, whatever fate befalls you!
You’ve been some little time, my Lord. Perhaps you scarce remember
The far-off early days of that resistance.
Was it in October last? Or was it in November?
And now the leaves are turning and you stand in mid-September
Still staring at the Belfry in the distance.
Can you recall the fateful day — a day of drifting skies,
When you started on the famous Calais onset?
Can it be the War-Lord blundered when he urged the enterprise?
For surely it’s a weary while since first before your eyes
That old Belfry rose against the sunset.
You held council at your quarters when the budding Alexanders
And the Pickel-haubed Cæsars gave their reasons.
Was there one amongst that bristle-headed circle of commanders
Ever ventured the opinion that a little town of Flanders
Would hold you pounded here through all the seasons?
You all clasped hands upon it. You would break the British line,
You would smash a road to westward with your host,
The howitzers should thunder and the Uhlan lances shine
Till Calais heard the blaring of the distant “Wacht am Rhein,”
As you topped the grassy uplands of the coast.
Said the Graf von Feuer-Essen, “It’s a fact beyond discussion,
That man to man we can outfight the foe.
There is valour in the French, there is patience in the Russian,
But blend all war-like virtues and you get the lordly Prussian,”
And the bristle-headed murmured, “Das ist so.”
“And the British,” cried another, “they are mercenary cattle,
Without one noble impulse of the soul,
Degenerate and drunken; if the dollars chink and rattle,
‘Tis the only sort of music that will call them to the battle.”
And all the bristle-headed cried, “Ja wohl!”
And so next day your battle rolled across the Menin Plain,
Where Capper’s men stood lonely to your wrath.
You broke him, and you broke him, but you broke him all in vain,
For he and his contemptibles kept closing up again,
And the khaki bar was still across your path.
And on the day when Gheluvelt lay smoking in the sun,
When Von Deimling stormed so hotly in the van,
You smiled as Haig reeled backwards and you thought him on the run,
But, alas for dreams that vanish, for before the day was done
It was you, my Lord of Würtemberg, that ran.
A dreary day was that — but another came, more dreary,
When the Guard from Arras led your fierce attacks,
Spruce and splendid in the morning were the Potsdam Grenadiere,
But not so spruce that evening when they staggered spent and weary,
With those cursed British storming at their backs.
You knew — your spies had told you — that the ranks were scant and thin,
That the guns were short of shell and very few,
By all Bernhardi’s maxims you were surely bound to win,
There’s the open town before you. Haste, my Lord, and enter in,
Or the War-Lord may have telegrams for you.
Then came the rainy winter, when the price was ever dearer,
Every time you neared the prize of which you dreamed,
Each day the Belfry faced you but you never brought it nearer,
Each night you saw it clearly but you never saw it clearer.
Ah, what a weary time it must have seemed!
At last there came the Easter when you loosed the coward gases,
Surely you have got the rascals now!
You could see them spent and choking as you watched them thro’ your
glasses,
Yes, they choke, but never waver, and again the moment passes
Without one leaf of laurel for your brow.
Then at Hooge you had them helpless, for their guns were one to ten,
And you blasted trench and traverse at your will,
You had them dead and buried, but they still sprang up again.
“Donnerwetter!” cried your Lordship, “Donnerwetter!” cried your men,
For their very ghosts were guarding Ypres still.
Active, Guards, Reserve — men of every corps and name
That the bugles of the War-Lord muster in,
Each in turn you tried them, but the story was the same;
Play it how you would, my Lord, you never won the game,
No, never in a twelvemonth did you win.
A year, my Lord of Würtemberg — a year, or nearly so,
Since first you faced the British vis-à-vis!
Your learned Commandanten are the men who ought to know,
But to ordinary mortals it would seem a trifle slow,
If you really mean to travel to the sea.
If you cannot straf the British, since they strafen you so well,
You can safely smash the town that lies so near,
So it’s down with arch and buttress, down with belfry and with bell,
And it’s hoch the seven-seven that can drop the petrol shell
On the shrines that pious hands have loved to rear!
Fair Ypres was a relic of the soul of other days,
A poet’s dream, a wanderer’s delight,
We will keep it as a symbol of your brute Teutonic ways
That millions yet unborn may come and curse you as they gaze
At this token of your impotence and spite.
For shame, my Lord of Würtemberg! Across the Flemish Fen
See where the little army calls you.
It’s just the old familiar line of fifty thousand men,
They’ve beat you once or twice, my Lord, but venture it again,
Come, try your luck, whatever fate befalls you.
GROUSING
“The army swore terribly in Flanders.”
Uncle Toby.
What do the soldiers say?
“Dam! Dam! D
am!
I don’t mind cold, I don’t mind heat,
Over the top for a Sunday treat,
With Fritz I’ll always take my spell,
But I want my grub, and where in hell
Is the jam?”
What does the officer say?
“Dam! Dam! Dam!
Mud and misery, flies and stench,
Piggin’ it here in a beastly trench,
But what I mean, by Jove, you see,
I like my men and they don’t mind me,
So, on the whole, I’d rather be
Where I am.”
What does the enemy say?
“Kolossal Verdam!
They told me, when the war began,
The British Tommy always ran,
And so he does, just as they said,
But, Donnerwetter! it’s straight ahead,
Like a ram.”
What does the public say?
“Dam! Dam! Dam!
They tax me here, they tax me there,
Bread is dear and the cupboard bare,
I’m bound to grouse, but if it’s the way
To win the war, why then I’ll pay
Like a lamb.”
THE VOLUNTEER
(1914–1919)
The dreams are passed and gone, old man,
That came to you and me,
Of a six days’ stunt on an east coast front,
And the Hun with his back to the sea.
Lord, how we worked and swotted sore
To be fit when the day should come!
Four years, my lad, and five months more,
Since first we followed the drum.
Though “Follow the drum” is a bit too grand,
For we ran to no such frills;
It was just the whistles of Nature’s band
That heartened us up the hills.
That and the toot of the corporal’s flute,
Until he could blow no more,
And the lilt of “Sussex by the Sea,”
The marching song of the corps.