Voices of Silence

  All its thoughts are bent in silence on the strife beyond the seas.

  It is watching, it is waiting, and it cannot choose but dwell,

  On the dust-brown lines in Picardy that front the hordes of Hell.

  Spring is pulsing in our gardens but we hardly feel its breath;

  Through the song of thrush and linnet throbs the choral ode of Death;

  And we walk like men who wander in some dream’s mysterious maze,

  Half-instinctive, half-unconscious, through the old familiar ways,

  Hope with doubt and fear contending, while our hearts are strained and tense,

  As we count the fateful minutes in the anguish of suspense;

  As a prayer is breathed to Heaven from the million lips that say,

  ‘God of Battles shield our England and her soldier sons this day!’

  [What of our comrades in the forward post?]

  What of our comrades in the forward post?

  The fog of war but deepened with the day.

  We knew that in that troubled ocean lay

  Unchartered shoals, blind rocks, and treacherous coast.

  And what of yonder never-ending host

  Of wan, unwounded Portuguese? Ah, stay,

  Pale sergeant. Do you bleed? You came that way?

  What is the tidings? Is the front line lost?

  ‘Nothing is known of posts that lie before

  Levantie. At the cross-roads hellish fire

  Has cut them off who shouldered the first load.’

  Can they live through it? ‘They can not retire,

  Nor can you reinforce. I know no more

  But this. No living thing comes down that road.’

  . . . . .

  Never wound cortège more exceeding slow,

  Nor mourners to more melancholy tones,

  Than that wan wending, musicked by the moans

  Of wounded men, whom pity bade us show

  That much of tenderness. Nor friend nor foe

  Spoke in the heavy language of these groans,

  But stark mankind, whose utter anguish owns

  A common nature, in a common woe.

  Full many a mile of weary footing sore,

  By miry side tracks, not unkindly led;

  And each unwounded man his burden bore

  On stretcher or in blanket, ransacked bed,

  Duck-board uprooted, hand-cart, unhinged door.

  We left behind the dying and the dead.

  Hour followed hour, and slowly on we wound,

  Till wan day turned to front the gradual west;

  And with day’s waning waned the dream of rest

  For the worn bearers, whom the twilight found

  Voyaging no-man’s gray, wide-watered ground,

  Their shoulders bowed and aching backs distressed;

  Isthmused between deep pools, and sorely pressed

  To foot the flanks of many a slippery mound;

  While floundering convoys, till the light was gone,

  Across the perilous space their drivers nurse,

  Limber and gun, by frightened horses drawn,

  Whose plunging swerve that bogged their burdens worse,

  Provoked Teutonic fury, well laid on

  With sounding whipcord and sonorous curse.

  And darkness fell, and a great void of space,

  As if to bar our further going on,

  Unfeatured, huge, gloomed o’er us. No light shone.

  Strength, too, scarce held sufficient now to trace

  The squalid reaches of this dismal place;

  And silence settled near and far upon

  That vacancy at length – our last guide gone.

  Night hid each from his comrade, face from face.

  As is a voyage through the uncharted waste

  Of sea, unpiloted by any star,

  Alone, unmooned, uncomforted, unplanned;

  So forward still in silent pain we paced,

  Nor light of moon nor pharos gleamed from far

  Across the boding gloom of that lost land.

  We came to Aubers at the dead of night,

  And found the semblance of that circled hell,

  Which Dante once, damnation’s pains to tell,

  Paced out in darkness, agony and fright.

  In that blank lazarette no kindly light

  On bending form of nurse or surgeon fell,

  But darkness and barred doors proclaimed too well

  The piteous end of long-endured plight.

  No room was there in stable or in stall,

  Nor roof to shelter cattle while they eat,

  Where wounded men could shelter from the blight

  Of the foul dew that drizzling covered all.

  But in the open and the squelching street

  We left them to endure the drenching night.

  . . . . .

  The last march opened with the sudden blaze

  Of howitzers upon the face of night,

  Waving us onward ere the laggard light

  Of morning broke down transport-crowded ways.

  Next to the first was this the bitterest phase

  Of our humiliation. Yet ’tis right

  To chronicle some kindness, and requite

  Our armed custodians with this word of praise.

  By Fournes, by Haubourdin, the endless reel

  Of marching men ran out its windings slow,

  Till near day’s end, nigh broken on the wheel

  Of hunger, and scarce longer fit to go,

  Within the moated Citadel of Lille

  The sharper pang gave place to deeper woe.

  A.A. Bowman

  During the Battle

  O the terror of the Battle at this ending of the days!

  O the thunder of the wings through the gloom!

  O the thousand thousand companies that strew the sombre ways

  To achieve this final doom!

  Where the flames disrupt the night and the hell-fumes flee,

  ’Mid the darkness and the splitting of the skies,

  Only your young white wistful face I see,

  My brother, only your eyes!

  Louis Golding

  The Tide

  To the Royal Naval Division

  This is a last year’s map;

  I know it all so well,

  Stream and gully and trench and sap,

  Hamel and all that hell;

  See where the old lines wind;

  It seems but yesterday

  We left them many a league behind

  And put the map away.

  ‘Never again’, we said,

  ‘Shall we sit in the Kentish Caves;

  Never again will the night-mules tread

  Over the Beaucourt graves;

  They shall have Peace’, we dreamed –

  ‘Peace and the quiet sun’,

  And over the hills the French folk streamed

  To live in the land we won.

  But the Bosch has Beaucourt now;

  It is all as it used to be –

  Airmen peppering Thiepval brow,

  Death at the Danger Tree;

  The tired men bring their tools

  And dig in the old holes there;

  The great shells spout in the Ancre pools,

  And lights go up from Serre.

  And the regiment came, they say,

  Back to the selfsame land

  And fought like men in the same old way

  Where the cookers used to stand;

  And I know not what they thought

  As they passed the Puisieux road,

  And over the ground where Freyberg fought

  The tide of the grey men flowed.

  But I think they did not grieve,

  Though they left by the old Bosch line

  Many a cross they loathed to leave,

  Many a mate of mine;

  I know that their eyes were brave,

  I know that their lips were stern,

&n
bsp; For these went back at the seventh wave,

  But they wait for the tide to turn.

  A.P. Herbert

  The German Graves

  I wonder are there roses still

  In Ablain St Nazaire,

  And crosses girt with daffodil

  In that old garden there.

  I wonder if the long grass waves

  With wild-flowers just the same

  Where Germans made their soldiers’ graves

  Before the English came?

  The English set those crosses straight

  And kept the legends clean;

  The English made the wicket-gate

  And left the garden green;

  And now who knows what regiments dwell

  In Ablain St Nazaire?

  But I would have them guard as well

  The graves we guarded there.

  So do not tear those fences up

  And drive your wagons through,

  Or trample rose and buttercup

  As careless feet may do;

  For I have friends where Germans tread

  In graves across the line,

  And as I do towards their dead

  So may they do to mine.

  And when at last the Prussians pass

  Among those mounds and see

  The reverent cornflowers crowd the grass

  Because of you and me,

  They’ll give perhaps one humble thought

  To all the ‘English fools’

  Who fought as never men have fought

  But somehow kept the rules.

  A.P. Herbert

  The Turn of the Tide

  By the Kaiser

  When King Canute sat by the sea

  To stop the waves – but shirked it,

  He can’t have known – it seems to me –

  The tide would turn at half-past three

  Or else he might have worked it.

  And so it was that old Canute,

  His kingly honour pawning,

  Allowed the waves to reach his boot

  And then proclaimed in accents cute

  He meant it as a warning.

  But kings should fly their flag with pride,

  Nor ever deign to strike it.

  And if they watch the turn of tide

  They’ll still be on the winning side

  Although they may not like it.

  So now for Socialists I yearn

  Which really is a rum thing.

  With democratic zeal I burn

  (Until the tide again shall turn

  And then I’ll give them something!)

  Edward de Stein

  Victory Assured!

  (Prime Minister at the Guildhall)

  At no distant date Britons, Allies, Colonials see: –

  Final Victory on Land and Victory on Sea:

  The Mesopotamia struggle will be at an end:

  The Huns for ever vanquished and friend

  Shakes hand with friend.

  Work hard at Munitions and spare your wealth:

  Be careful with food and take care of your health:

  Let every Soldier, Sailor, and Civilian do his best,

  A glorious time is coming, when all shall have rest.

  F.H. French

  When I Come Home

  When I come home, dear folk o’ mine,

  We’ll drink a cup of olden wine;

  And yet, however rich it be,

  No wine will taste so good to me

  As English air. How I shall thrill

  To drink it in on Hampstead Hill

  When I come home!

  When I come home, and leave behind

  Dark things I would not call to mind,

  I’ll taste good ale and home-made bread,

  And see white sheets and pillows spread.

  And there is one who’ll softly creep

  To kiss me, ere I fall asleep,

  And tuck me ’neath the counterpane,

  And I shall be a boy again,

  When I come home!

  When I come home from dark to light,

  And tread the roadways long and white,

  And tramp the lanes I tramped of yore,

  And see the village greens once more,

  The tranquil farms, the meadows free,

  The friendly trees that nod to me,

  And hear the lark beneath the sun,

  ’Twill be good pay for what I’ve done,

  When I come home!

  Leslie Coulson

  To Certain Persons

  (‘I would rather see England free than sober’)

  Did you think (fools!) I hated men?

  If so you thought, go think again.

  And thought you that when I wrote ‘If

  We Return’ that we’d return to sniff

  Over the drinkers of ale, the smokers

  Of ’baccy, the human vulgar jokers,

  Best of what God and good green earth

  Have made; that I meant lemonade,

  And not a valiant great birth

  Of Freedom, of men unafraid

  Claiming a man’s just right to eat,

  Drink, live and love, and breathe the sweet

  Air of old England? Now as then

  I stand for men – just men, the men

  Who saved from violence that skin

  Of yours: – God pardon them the sin!

  * * *

  Do I loathe drunkenness? I do, –

  Just half as much as cant, and you!

  F.W. Harvey

  The Call

  There’s an office back in London, and the dusty sunlight falls

  With its swarms of dancing motes across the floor,

  On the piles of books and papers and the drab distempered walls

  And the bowlers on their pegs behind the door.

  There’s an office-stool in London where a fellow used to sit

  (But the chap that used to sit there’s oversea);

  There’s a job they’re keeping open till that fellow’s done his bit,

  And the one that job is waiting for is – Me!

  And it may be black ingratitude, but oh, Good Lord, I know

  I could never stick the office-life again,

  With the coats and cuffs and collars and the long hours crawling slow

  And the quick lunch and the same old morning train;

  I have looked on Life and Death and seen the naked soul of man,

  And the heart of things is other than it seemed,

  And the world is somehow larger than the good old office plan,

  And the ways of earth are wider than I dreamed.

  There’s a chap in the Canadians – a clinking good chap too –

  And he hails from back o’ nowhere in B.C.,

  And he says it’s sure some country, and I wonder if it’s true,

  And I rather fancy that’s the place for me.

  There’s a trail I mean to follow and a camp I mean to share

  Out beyond the survey, up in Cassiar,

  For there’s something wakened in me that I never knew was there

  And they’ll have to find some other chap to fill that vacant chair

  When the boys come marching homeward from the War.

  C. Fox-Smith

  Peace Problems

  What will they do, when the Boys have got back?

  What’s to become of the Wren and the Waac?

  Will they carry on, while we tired heroes slack?

  I wonder.

  Ah! Shall I then marry the girl I adore?

  (Who earns same as I did – perhaps a bit more)

  Will one income keep two – perhaps three – maybe four?

  God help us!

  But what shall I do, when I’ve got my discharge?

  When I’ve stepped off the deck of the cross-channel barge

  And behave for a spell like a loonie at large?

  I wonder.

  Shall I lecture Girl Guides from my Field Ser
vice Book

  Till they quake at my ‘Shun’ and they quail at my look?

  No, I shan’t then.

  But what can I do, when the war is ‘finee’?

  Where is that job that is waiting for me?

  Will she give up my stool when they make her ‘M.P.’?

  I wonder.

  Could I slog at a desk? Could I stick on the land?

  Shall I punch cows in Texas? or mine on the Rand?

  Is there any old job that I think I could stand?

  There isn’t.

  Shall I lecture or write of the battles I’ve won –

  How I got the C.B.? or is that overdone?

  Or – would Dad like to pension his brave soldier son?

  No, he wouldn’t.

  Then what the – I’ve got it! I’ll be a Cook’s Guide

  And thrill wond’ring tourists with rapture and pride

  As I point out the spots where I fought and I died!

  Well, why not?

  From a Full Heart

  In days of peace my fellow-men

  Rightly regarded me as more like

  A Bishop than a Major-Gen.,

  And nothing since has made me warlike;

  But when this age-long struggle ends

  And I have seen the Allies dish up

  The goose of HINDENBURG – oh, friends!

  I shall out-bish the mildest Bishop.

  When the War is over and the Kaiser’s out of print,

  I’m going to buy some tortoises and watch the beggars sprint;

  When the War is over and the sword at last we sheathe,

  I’m going to keep a jelly-fish and listen to it breathe.

  I never really longed for gore,

  And any taste for red corpuscles

  That lingered with me left before

  The German troops had entered Brussels.

  In early days the Colonel’s ‘Shun!’

  Froze me; and, as the War grew older,

  The noise of someone else’s gun

  Left me considerably colder.

  When the War is over and the battle has been won,

  I’m going to buy a barnacle and take it for a run;

  When the War is over and the German Fleet we sink,

  I’m going to keep a silk-worm’s egg and listen to it think.

  The Captains and the Kings depart –

  It may be so, but not lieutenants;