Poems of the Great War Read online

And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,

  With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,

  To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,

  Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,

  Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move,

  And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,

  And all the little emptiness of love!

  Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,

  Where there’s no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,

  Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;

  Nothing to shake the laughing heart’s long peace there

  But only agony, and that has ending;

  And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.

  II Safety

  Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest

  He who has found our hid security,

  Assured in the dark tides of the world at rest,

  And heard our word, ‘Who is so safe as we?’

  We have found safety with all things undying,

  The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth,

  The deep night, and birds singing, and clouds flying,

  And sleep, and freedom, and the autumnal earth.

  We have built a house that is not for Time’s throwing.

  We have gained a peace unshaken by pain for ever.

  War knows no power. Safe shall be my going,

  Secretly armed against all death’s endeavour;

  Safe though all safety’s lost; safe where men fall;

  And if these poor limbs die, safest of all.

  III The Dead

  Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!

  There’s none of these so lonely and poor of old,

  But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.

  These laid the world away; poured out the red

  Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be

  Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,

  That men call age; and those who would have been,

  Their sons, they gave, their immortality.

  Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth,

  Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain.

  Honour has come back, as a king, to earth,

  And paid his subjects with a royal wage;

  And Nobleness walks in our ways again;

  And we have come into our heritage.

  IV The Dead

  These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,

  Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth,

  The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,

  And sunset, and the colours of the earth.

  These had seen movement, and heard music; known

  Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;

  Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;

  Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.

  There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter

  And Ht by the rich skies, all day. And after,

  Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance

  And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white

  Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,

  A width, a shining peace, under the night.

  V The Soldier

  If I should die, think only this of me:

  That there’s some corner of a foreign field

  That is for ever England. There shall be

  In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

  A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

  Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,

  A body of England’s, breathing English air,

  Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

  And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

  A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

  Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

  Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

  And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

  In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

  WILFRED OWEN

  Mental Cases

  Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?

  Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,

  Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,

  Baring teeth that leer like skulls’ tongues wicked?

  Stroke on stroke of pain, – but what slow panic,

  Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?

  Ever from their hair and through their hand palms

  Misery swelters. Surely we have perished

  Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?

  – These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.

  Memory fingers in their hair of murders,

  Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.

  Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,

  Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.

  Always they must see these things and hear them,

  Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,

  Carnage incomparable and human squander

  Rucked too thick for these men’s extrication.

  Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented

  Back into their brains, because on their sense

  Sunlight seems a bloodsmear: night comes blood-black;

  Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh

  – Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,

  Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.

  – Thus their hands are plucking at each other;

  Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;

  Snatching after us who smote them, brother,

  Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.

  SIEGFRIED SASSOON

  The Death-Bed

  He drowsed and was aware of silence heaped

  Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls;

  Aqueous like floating rays of amber light,

  Soaring and quivering in the wings of sleep.

  Silence and safety; and his mortal shore

  Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death.

  Someone was holding water to his mouth.

  He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped

  Through crimson gloom to darkness; and forgot

  The opiate throb and ache that was his wound.

  Water – calm, sliding green above the weir.

  Water – a sky-lit alley for his boat,

  Bird-voiced, and bordered with reflected flowers

  And shaken hues of summer; drifting down,

  He dipped contented oars, and sighed, and slept.

  Night, with a gust of wind, was in the ward,

  Blowing the curtain to a glimmering curve.

  Night. He was blind; he could not see the stars

  Glinting among the wraiths of wandering cloud;

  Queer blots of colour, purple, scarlet, green,

  Flickered and faded in his drowning eyes.

  Rain – he could hear it rustling through the dark;

  Fragrance and passionless music woven as one;

  Warm rain on drooping roses; pattering showers

  That soak the woods; not the harsh rain that sweeps

  Behind the thunder, but a trickling peace,

  Gently and slowly washing life away.

  He stirred, shifting his body; then the pain

  Leapt like a prowling beast, and gripped and tore

  His groping dreams with grinding claws and fangs.

  But someone was beside him; soon he lay

  Shuddering because that evil thing had passed.

  And death, who’d stepped toward him, paused and stared.

  Light many lamps and gather round his bed.

  Lend him your eyes, warm blood, and will to live.

  Speak to him; rouse him; you may save him yet.

  He’s young; he hated Wa
r; how should he die

  When cruel old campaigners win safe through?

  But death replied: ‘I choose him.’ So he went,

  And there was silence in the summer night;

  Silence and safety; and the veils of sleep.

  Then, far away, the thudding of the guns.

  IVOR GURNEY

  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’

  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 deep oaths

  (Polite to God) and retreated and came on again,

  Again retreated –and a second time faced the screen

  ISAAC ROSENBERG

  Break of Day in the Trenches

  The darkness crumbles away –

  It is the same old druid Time as ever.

  Only a live thing leaps my hand –

  A queer sardonic rat –

  As I pull the parapet’s poppy

  To stick behind my ear.

  Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew

  Your cosmopolitan sympathies.

  Now you have touched this English hand

  You will do the same to a German –

  Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure

  To cross the sleeping green between.

  It seems you inwardly grin as you pass

  Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes

  Less chanced than you for life,

  Bonds to the whims of murder,

  Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,

  The torn fields of France.

  What do you see in our eyes

  At the shrieking iron and flame

  Hurled through still heavens?

  What quaver – what heart aghast?

  Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins

  Drop, and are ever dropping;

  But mine in my ear is safe,

  Just a little white with the dust.

  EDGELL RICKWORD

  The Soldier Addresses his Body

  I shall be mad if you get smashed about,

  we’ve had good times together, you and I;

  although you groused a bit when luck was out,

  say a girl turned us down, or we went dry.

  But there’s a world of things we haven’t done,

  countries not seen, where people do strange things;

  eat fish alive, and mimic in the sun

  the solemn gestures of their stone-grey kings.

  I’ve heard of forests that are dim at noon

  where snakes and creepers wrestle all day long;

  where vivid beasts grow pale with the full moon,

  gibber and cry, and wail a mad old song;

  because at the full moon the Hippogriff

  with crinkled ivory snout and agate feet,

  with his green eye will glare them cold and stiff

  for the coward Wyvern to come down and eat.

  Vodka and kvass, and bitter mountain wines

  we’ve never drunk; nor snatched the bursting grapes

  to pelt slim girls among Sicilian vines,

  who’d flicker through the leaves, faint frolic shapes.

  Yes, there’s a world of things we’ve never done,

  but it’s a sweat to knock them into rhyme,

  let’s have a drink, and give the cards a run

  and leave dull verse to the dull peaceful time.

  HERBERT READ

  A Short Poem for Armistice Day

  Gather or take fierce degree

  trim the lamp set out for sea

  here we are at the workmen’s entrance

  clock in and shed your eminence.

  Notwithstanding, work it diverse ways

  work it diverse days, multiplying four digestions

  here we make artificial flowers

  of paper tin and metal thread.

  One eye one leg one arm one lung

  a syncopated sick heart-beat

  the record is not nearly worn

  that weaves a background to our work.

  I have no power therefore have patience

  these flowers have no sweet scent

  no lustre in the petal no increase

  from fertilizing flies and bees.

  No seed they have no seed

  their tendrils are of wire and grip

  the buttonhole the lip

  and never fade

  And will not fade though life

  and lustre go in genuine flowers

  and men like flowers are cut

  and wither on a stem

  And will not fade a year or more

  I stuck one in a candlestick

  and there it clings about the socket

  I have no power therefore have patience.

  WILFRED OWEN

  Dulce et Decorum est

  Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

  Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

  Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

  And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

  Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

  But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;

  Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

  Of gas–shells dropping softly behind.

  Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! –An ecstasy of fumbling

  Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

  And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime. –

  Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

  As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

  In all my dreams before my helpless sight

  He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

  If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

  Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

  And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

  His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin,

  If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

  Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs

  Bitten as the cud

  Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, –

  My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

  To children ardent for some desperate glory,

  The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

  Pro patria mori.

  SIEGFRIED SASSOON

  Trench Duty

  Shaken from sleep, and numbed and scarce awake,

  Out in the trench with three hours’ watch to take,

  I blunder through the splashing mirk; and then

  Hear the gruff muttering voices of the men

  Crouching in cabins candle-chinked with light.

  Hark! There’s the big bombardment on our right

  Rumbling and bumping; and the dark’s a glare

  Of flickering horror in the sectors where

  We raid the Boche; men waiting, stiff and chilled,

  Or crawling on their bellies through the wire.

  ‘What? Stretcher–bearers wanted? Some one killed?’

  Five minutes ago I heard a sniper fire:

  Why did he do it?… Starlight overhead –

&nb
sp; Blank stars. I’ wide-awake; and some chap’s dead.

  RICHARD ALDINGTON

  Trench Idyll

  We sat together in the trench,

  He on a lump of frozen earth

  Blown in the night before,

  I on an unexploded shell;

  And smoked and talked, like exiles,

  Of how pleasant London was,

  Its women, restaurants, night clubs, theatres,

  How at that very hour

  The taxi-cabs were taking folk to dine …

  Then we sat silent for a while

  As a machine-gun swept the parapet.

  He said:

  ‘I’ve been here on and off two years

  And seen only one man killed’.

  ‘That’s odd.’

  ‘The bullet hit him in the throat;

  He fell in a heap on the fire-step,

  And called out ‘My God! dead!’

  ‘Good Lord, how terrible!’

  ‘Well, as to that, the nastiest job I’ve had

  Was last year on this very front

  Taking the discs at night from men

  Who’d hung for six months on the wire

  Just over there.

  The worst of all was

  They fell to pieces at a touch.

  Thank God we couldn’t see their faces;

  They had gas helmets on…’

  I shivered;

  ‘It’s rather cold here, sir, suppose we move?’

  EDWARD THOMAS

  In Memoriam

  The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood

  This Eastertide call into mind the men,

  Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should

  Have gathered them and will do never again.

  CHARLOTTE MEW

  The Cenotaph

  Not yet will those measureless fields be green again

  Where only yesterday the wild sweet blood of wonderful youth was shed;

  There is a grave whose earth must hold too long, too deep a stain,

  Though for ever over it we may speak as proudly as we may tread.

  But here, where the watchers by lonely hearths from the thrust of an inward sword have more slowly bled,

  We shall build the Cenotaph: Victory, winged, with Peace winged too, at the column’s head.

  And over the stairway, at the foot – oh! here, leave desolate, passionate hands to spread

  Violets, roses, and laurel, with the small, sweet, twinkling country things.

  Speaking so wistfully of other Springs,

  From the little gardens of little places where son or sweetheart was born and bred.

  In splendid sleep, with a thousand brothers

  To lovers – to mothers

  Here, too, lies he:

  Under the purple, the green, the red,

  It is all young life: it must break some women’s hearts to see

  Such a brave, gay coverlet to such a bed!

  Only, when all is done and said,

  God is not mocked and neither are the dead.