Voices of Silence

by Vivien Noakes

  Soon after hostilities ceased, relatives and survivors began to make pilgrimages to France, to search for the graves of those who had died and to retread the old battlefields. There were suggestions that parts of the front – in particular the town of Ypres – should remain as they were to form permanent shrines to the fallen and as a reminder of the destruction wrought by war, but local people did not agree. Gradually their towns and villages were rebuilt, and normal life began to return to the devastated countryside.

  The Battle-fields

  You never saw the Summer dance and sing

  And wreathe her steps with laughter, toss her larks,

  And strew her crimson poppies, and make rise

  Across the meadows in her train a cry

  Of happy colors – O, you never knew

  How birds can make a business of their singing,

  How the golden music can rain down

  From sunny heaven like a hail-storm all

  Day long – you never saw the naked life

  Of Summer, till you saw her in her wrath

  And gladness, young-eyed, golden-irised, loud

  And wild and lovely-drunken, running, prancing,

  Clambering across these fields of death.

  Old pits and craters where the solid earth

  Rocked up and smoked like water are the beds

  Of blowing lilies; huge, dull-yellowing piles

  Of steel, the dead-ends of the work of death,

  Are choirs for thrushes and gay trellises

  For rose and morning-glory; and you see

  The tissue petals trailing down the holes

  Men huddled in to die like poisoned rats.

  You see black, crazy strings of barbed-wire fences

  Legging down the hillside like old men

  Amuck, tripped up and clambered on and loved

  Down into earth by mountains of wild-grape

  And ivy. And you see vast obscene tanks,

  Gigantic bugs without antennæ, bugs

  Named Lottie and named Liesel, cracked and blasted,

  Pouring out their iron guts among

  The daisies, and you see the daisies laugh;

  And long-tailed pies that fly like aeroplanes

  Float from their turrets, gentle in the blue.

  Whole cities were sown in this earth like seed.

  The wealth and eagerness of all mankind

  Was here, like mountain thunder, coursing through

  These ghostly paths, that hie so privately

  Beneath the glossy crowds of bee-loved clover.

  They were here for murder, death-determined.

  But the shepherd trails his willing sheep

  To crop that clover; and the clicking hoe

  And sliding shovel talk as surely forth

  As crickets when a summer storm is past.

  These villages, close-nesting like the hives

  Of bees, were crushed to blood and powder by

  The speeding hoof of war. Their temples fallen

  And their homes a pit for gravel, they,

  The many neighbours, are a lonely few

  Lost pioneers. But they had pitched their tents

  And tacked their paper shanties in the desert,

  And the hens are clucking, and the beans

  Are blossoming with white and brick-red blossoms,

  And the vine, the purple clematis,

  Is royal at the door. On holidays

  They lay their tools down, and with sunny wine

  From the old cellar-pits, and kindling mirth

  From depths incredible, they eat their bread

  In laughter, they fling jokes at the old war,

  And pour soup in the bugle, and sing loud,

  And pound the drum, and call out all the girls,

  And march, and dance, and fill the darkened streets

  With love and music till the moon goes out.

  In all death’s garden but one plot is dead,

  One cold, bleak acre swept-up for our tears,

  The turf, the pebbles, regular and still –

  The tired, white little crosses marking time!

  But they are feeble, and their watch is brief.

  To-day remembering a name, to-morrow

  They will mourn the death of memory;

  Another morrow they are gone; time’s wind

  Has blown the sweet-briar roses over them.

  Earth does not mind the madness of her children –

  She has room. From one gaunt womb she could

  Pour back those cities, and fill all these fields

  With men and women aching at their toil,

  And droll-faced children trudging with a pail

  To greet them. This raw miracle of life

  Is ruthless, reckless, sure. Plunge in your hands

  To fashion it; be ruthless, reckless, sure.

  Fear is the only danger. And the death

  Of dreams dreamed weakly is the only death

  Of man – the prayers sighed outward from the earth,

  The songs that feed the poet with his wish,

  Beatitudes tramped under armies, thoughts

  Too mother-tender, or too childly wise,

  To stand out in the weather of the world,

  And deeds untimely kind, and deed-like words

  Of Love’s apostles, who would pilgrim down

  The black volcanic valley of all time

  With hymns and waving palms, their sweet white banners

  Lost and perishing, like breath of brooks,

  Like strings of thin mist when the mountains burn.

  In them man’s spirit in its power dies.

  The rest is Nature’s life – and she will live,

  And laugh on dancing to the doomless future,

  Slave to no thought softer than her own.

  Max Eastman

  The Menin Road, March 1919

  Over the flat dim land I see you moving

  Methodically; under a dark wide sky

  Full of low clouds. You are gone far from our loving.

  No fret of ours or grief can touch you now.

  The road speaks nothing to our longing now.

  The winds are dumb to us and pass us by.

  The nameless tracks, the faded grass

  Spread out as far as we can see.

  The homeless shadows glance and pass

  By shattered wood and naked tree.

  Splintered and stark they rise alone

  Against so wonderful a blue

  Of distance – an intensity

  At once so steadfast and so true

  I wonder are you wholly gone?

  Carola Oman

  The Wood

  I fear this beautiful, unholy place!

  But O, what frights me among elder-boughs

  June-blossoming: wild roses? Evil’s here.

  But how is evil here? What evil comes

  Out of June meadows into the wood’s calm?

  Is it with Earth the wrong lies? Or with me?

  Did elders bloom like this, on a wood’s edge,

  Close to pale foxgloves, neighbored with a briar,

  When, long ago – how long I know not – hate,

  First fear, or first injustice, bred in me?

  Is this hid horror here, hid Memory?

  J.C. Chadwick

  Behind the Line

  Treasure not so the forlorn days

  When dun clouds flooded the naked plains

  With foul, remorseless rains;

  Thread not those memory ways

  Where by the dripping alien farms,

  Starved orchards with their shrivelled arms,

  The bitter mouldering wind would whine

  At the brisk mules clattering towards the Line.

  Remember not with so sharp skill

  Each chasm in the clouds that with strange fire

  Lit pyramid-fosse and spire

  Miles on miles from our hill;

  In the magic glass
, aye, then their lure

  Like heaven’s houses gleaming pure

  Might soothe the long-imprisoned sight

  And put the seething storm to flight.

  Enact not you so like a wheel

  The round of evenings in sandbagged rooms

  Where candles flicked the glooms;

  The jests old time could steal

  From ugly destiny, on whose brink

  The poor fools grappled fear with drink,

  And snubbed the hungry, raving guns

  With endless tunes on gramophones.

  About you spreads the world anew,

  The old fields all for your sense rejoice,

  Music has found her ancient voice,

  From the hills there’s heaven on earth to view;

  And kindly Mirth will raise his glass

  To bid you with dull Care go pass –

  And still you wander muttering on

  Over the shades of shadows gone.

  Somewhere in France (2)

  ‘Somewhere in France’ – we know not where – he lies,

  ’Mid shuddering earth and under anguished skies!

  We may not visit him, but this we say:

  Though our steps err, his shall not miss their way.

  From the exhaustion of War’s fierce embrace

  He, nothing doubting, went to his own place.

  To him has come, if not the crown and palm,

  The kiss of Peace – a vast, sufficing calm!

  So fine a spirit, daring, yet serene, –

  He may not, surely, lapse from what has been:

  Greater, not less, his wondering mind must be;

  Ampler the splendid vision he must see.

  ’Tis unbelievable he fades away, –

  An exhalation at the dawn of day!

  Nor dare we deem that he has but returned

  Into the Oversoul, to be discerned

  Hereafter in the bosom of the rose,

  In petal of the lily, or in those

  Far jewelled sunset skies that glow and pale,

  Or in the rich note of the nightingale.

  Nay, though all beauty may recall to mind

  What we in his fair life were wont to find,

  In sun his nature, and in morn his fire,

  In sea his force, in love his pure desire;

  He shall escape absorption, and shall still

  Preserve a faculty to know and will.

  Such is my hope, slow climbing to a faith:

  (We know not Life, how should we then know Death?)

  From our small limits, and withholdings free,

  Somewhere he dwells and keeps high company;

  Yet tainted not with so supreme a bliss

  As to forget he knew a world like this.

  John Hogben

  At Thiepval

  Oh, nevermore shall a bud awake

  On your tortured boughs at the call of Spring,

  But for your sake

  New life shall break

  From the seeds that Victory shall fling

  In earth of the soldier’s slumbering.

  For a hopeful Spring shall come at last,

  A summer of sunlight sweet and pure,

  When the fiery blast

  With its blight’s o’er past,

  And the shade of the green young trees shall lure

  The heirs of peace to a rest secure.

  But ye shall stand as witnesses

  Of the fight with a rude invading foe,

  Of its fiery stress

  And blood-bitterness,

  Meet testament of the brave below

  Who died for the peace the young trees know.

  J. E. Stewart

  A Father at the Grave of his Son

  Steady, heart, for here’s my journey’s end – earth’s end, for me

  And this the door which closes once, and opens never –

  These few unsodden clods of clay,

  A shelter and a shade

  To him who was, and is, my son.

  To me a grave, to him the rainbow’s end.

  Though Death make cowards of the living,

  They know him not, the dead.

  He the arrow, I the bow

  Which launched his flight towards infinity.

  That form of willow,

  Those eyes more eager than the dawn,

  With all their freshness and surprise!

  To him was duty pleasure, pleasure joy,

  And joy was gratitude.

  And with him many parts I’ve played,

  A perch for childhood clinging,

  His boyhood’s anchor, in youth a shield,

  And to his manhood’s dawn

  An answering call.

  And now am I an echo stilled,

  A silent bell, a wave without a shore.

  In him died out my name and line,

  Ancestry’s sum of heritage

  Back to the rim of Time.

  And now he has the whole Picardian plain for a grave,

  A fitting place to die

  Where man has died for man,

  To dream, to rest, and greet the morn.

  A treader of the skies,

  With brother falcons of the shield,

  He made new worlds his own,

  Soared beyond the condor’s ken,

  And shamed the eagle’s flight.

  He fought not treacherous foes on earth,

  But in his venture toward the sun,

  Met those for once ennobled by their deeds,

  Who challenged, fought or fell, or died with him.

  He knew not death, for as he fell,

  He loosed from him that body which had served its day,

  As wakes a sleeper from his dreams

  And lays his cloak aside.

  Then, eager went as eager came,

  Up sped his soul and up, and ever up, a meteor in uncharted space,

  A light to heavens new,

  A banneret of valour ’gainst the setting sun.

  And he has missed the heartache,

  Life’s jealousies and pain, and sympathies deceived.

  Away then, Sorrow, beguiling sister of Despair,

  I’ll rest awhile with Sadness

  In her twilight hour of balm,

  And let grief’s embers die.

  For I’ve a treasury of memories so rich and dear

  ’Twould beggar all the son-less men of earth to buy!

  Since memory’s but the bridge of time,

  I’ll build it true and high,

  To carry me across the skies

  When comes my journey far,

  And never fear but I’ll know well

  Where waits my boy for me –

  At the rainbow’s western end!

  France, September 1919

  Wade Chance

  Soldiers’ headstones

  L/20675 Private Alfred James Clark

  1st Queen’s Own (Royal West Kent Regiment)

  9 October 1915 Age 18

  FAREWELL BELOVED SO YOUNG AND BRAVE

  FOR KING AND COUNTRY HIS LIFE HE GAVE

  Carnoy Military Cemetery, Somme H.3

  847 Private A. G. Whittle

  11th Bttn Australian Infantry

  2 May 1915 Age 28

  TOO FAR AWAY YOUR GRAVE TO SEE

  BUT NOT TOO FAR TO THINK OF THEE

  Lone Pine Cemetery, Anzac I.G.1

  2167 Private Clifford Lionel Holton

  5th Bttn Australian Infantry

  13 August 1915 Age 19

  AN ANZAC BRAVE

  IN AN ANZAC GRAVE

  Lone Pine Cemetery, Anzac III B.54

  476 Private William Norman Arthur-Mason

  19th Bttn Australian Infantry

  19 September 1915 Age 19

  HE DID HIS DUTY SIMPLY, BRAVELY

  AND IN THE DOING DIED

  Shrapnel Valley Cemetery I, Anzac F.8

  Perfect Epilogue

  Armistice Day 1933

  It’s whe
n the leaves are fallen I think of you,

  And the long boulevards where the ghosts walk now,

  And Paris is dark again save for one great star

  That’s caught and held in the dark arms of a bough

  And wonder, among them are two a girl and boy

  Silent, because their love was greater than song,

  Who whisper ‘farewell’ and whisper ‘if it’s for ever’;

  And did not know, poor ghosts, for ever could be so long.

  It’s when the leaves are fallen I think of you,

  And if you’re lonely too, who went with the great host;

  And know that Time’s no mender of hearts but only

  Still the divider of Light and Darkness, Ghost.

  May Cannan

  Valete

  This is a tale not relished by our time,

  Soft with the thing that men call Victory.

  You will not hear it round the midnight floor,

  But only in the quiet, evening lane,

  Or by the hearths of those that once were young

  And stoop to feel the warmth of ashening fires,

  Forgetting and remembering again.

  They whisper that a thousand years ago,

  A thousand years – unless this night just gone –

  There was a road between the poplar trees

  Long sleepless from the tramp of soldiery.

  And as they marched, why! everybody sang

  His dearest tunes, and, strangely, all of these

  Together mingling, though in many a tongue,

  Turned to an anthem, rapturous and free.

  And this is true – that as their number passed,

  Suddenly there was no more singing:

  Only the silence, racked by crunching feet;

  The level throb of drums, and worn studs ringing.

  No emblem fluttered, not a hand was kissed,

  And we that saw them found no word to say,

  But stood there till the marching ebbed and died,

  And all that distant company became