Poems by Edward Shanks Part 2

_The Winter Soldier._

I. TO BE SUNG TO THE TUNE OF HIGH GERMANY

No more the English girls may go To follow with the drum But still they flock together To see the soldiers come; For horse and foot are marching by And the bold artillery: They're going to the cruel wars In Low Germany.

They're marching down by lane and town And they are hot and dry But as they marched together I heard the soldiers cry: "O all of us, both horse and foot And the proud artillery, We're going to the merry wars In Low Germany."

_August_, 1914

II. THE COMRADES

The men that marched and sang with me Are most of them in Flanders now: I lie abed and hear the wind Blow softly through the budding bough.

And they are scattered far and wide In this or that brave regiment; From trench to trench across the mud They go the way that others went.

They run with s.h.i.+ning bayonet Or lie and take a careful aim And theirs it is to learn of death And theirs the joy and theirs the fame.

III. IN TRAINING

The wind is cold and heavy And storms are in the sky: Our path across the heather Goes higher and more high.

To right, the town we came from, To left, blue hills and sea: The wind is growing colder And s.h.i.+vering are we.

We drag with stiffening fingers Our rifles up the hill.

The path is steep and tangled But leads to Flanders still.

IV. THE OLD SOLDIERS

We come from dock and s.h.i.+pyard, we come from car and train, We come from foreign countries to slope our arms again And, forming fours by numbers or turning to the right, We're learning all our drill again and 'tis a pretty sight.

Our names are all unspoken, our regiments forgotten, For some of us were pretty bad and some of us were rotten And some will misremember what once they learnt with pain And hit a b.l.o.o.d.y Serjeant and go to clink again.

V. GOING IN TO DINNER

Beat the knife on the plate and the fork on the can, For we're going in to dinner, so make all the noise you can, Up and down the officer wanders, looking blue, Sing a song to cheer him up, he wants his dinner too.

March into the dining-hall, make the tables rattle Like a dozen dam' machine guns in the b.l.o.o.d.y battle, Use your forks for drum-sticks, use your plates for drums, Make a most infernal clatter, here the dinner comes!

VI. ON TREK

Under a grey dawn, timidly breaking, Through the little village the men are waking, Easing their stiff limbs and rubbing their eyes; From my misted window I watch the sun rise.

In the middle of the village a fountain stands, Round it the men sit, was.h.i.+ng their red hands.

Slowly the light grows, we call the roll over, Bring the laggards stumbling from their warm cover, Slowly the company gathers all together And the men and the officer look shyly at the weather.

By the left, quick march! Off the column goes.

All through the village all the windows unclose: At every window stands a child, early waking, To see what road the company is taking.

VII. LEAVING THE BILLET

Good luck, good health, good temper, these, A very hive of honey-bees To make and store up happiness, Should wait upon you without cease, If I'd the power to call them down Into this stuffy little town, Where the dull air in sticky wreaths Afflicts a man each time he breathes.

But since I have no power to call Benevolent spirits down at all, I'll wish you all the good I know And close the chapter up and go.

VIII. THE FAREWELL

Farewell to rising early, now comes the lying late, And long on the parade-ground my company shall wait Before I come to join it on mornings cold and dark And no more shall I lead it across the rimy park.

The men shall still manoeuvre in suns.h.i.+ne and in rain And still they'll make the blunders I shall not check again; They'll march upon the highway in weather foul and fair And talk and sing with laughter and I shall not be there.

IX. ON ACCOUNT OF ILL HEALTH

You go, brave friends, and I am cast to stay behind, To read with frowning eyes and discontented mind The s.h.i.+ning history that you are gone to make, To sleep with working brain, to dream and to awake Into another day of most ign.o.ble peace, To drowse, to read, to smoke, to pray that war may cease.

The spring is coming on, and with the spring you go In countries where strange scents on the April breezes blow; You'll see the primroses marched down into the mud, You'll see the hawthorn-tree wear crimson flowers of blood And I shall walk about, as I did walk of old, Where the laburnum trails its chains of useless gold, I'll break a branch of may, I'll pick a violet And see the new-born flowers that soldiers must forget, I'll love, I'll laugh, I'll dream and write undying songs But with your regiment my marching soul belongs.

Men that have marched with me and men that I have led Shall know and feel the things that I have only read, Shall know what thing it is to sleep beneath the skies And to expect their death what time the sun shall rise.

Men that have marched with me shall march to peace again, Bringing for plunder home glad memories of pain, Of toils endured and done, of terrors quite brought under, And all the world shall be their plaything and their wonder.

Then in that new-born world, unfriendly and estranged, I shall be quite alone, I shall be left unchanged.

_The Pool._

Out of that noise and hurry of large life The river flings me in an idle pool: The waters still go on with stir and strife And sunlit eddies, and the beautiful Tall trees lean down upon the mighty flow, Reflected in that movement. Beauty there Waxes more beautiful, the moments grow Thicker and keener in that lovely air Above the river. Here small sticks and straws Come now to harbour, gather, lie and rot, Out of cross-currents and the water's flaws In this unmoving death, where joy is not, Where war's a shade again, ambition rotten And bitter hopes and fears alike forgotten.