A Treasury of War Poetry Part 23

_Frederic Manning_

THE TRENCHES

Endless lanes sunken in the clay, Bays, and traverses, fringed with wasted herbage, Seed-pods of blue scabious, and some lingering blooms; And the sky, seen as from a well, Brilliant with frosty stars.

We stumble, cursing, on the slippery duck-boards.

Goaded like the d.a.m.ned by some invisible wrath, A will stronger than weariness, stronger than animal fear, Implacable and monotonous.

Here a shaft, slanting, and below A dusty and flickering light from one feeble candle And p.r.o.ne figures sleeping uneasily, Murmuring, And men who cannot sleep, With faces impa.s.sive as masks, Bright, feverish eyes, and drawn lips, Sad, pitiless, terrible faces, Each an incarnate curse.

Here in a bay, a helmeted sentry Silent and motionless, watching while two sleep, And he sees before him With indifferent eyes the blasted and torn land Peopled with stiff p.r.o.ne forms, stupidly rigid, As tho' they had not been men.

Dead are the lips where love laughed or sang, The hands of youth eager to lay hold of life, Eyes that have laughed to eyes, And these were begotten, O Love, and lived lightly, and burnt With the l.u.s.t of a man's first strength: ere they were rent.

Almost at unawares, savagely; and strewn In b.l.o.o.d.y fragments, to be the carrion Of rats and crows.

And the sentry moves not, searching Night for menace with weary eyes.

_Frederic Manning_

SONNETS

I

I see across the chasm of flying years The pyre of Dido on the vacant sh.o.r.e; I see Medea's fury and hear the roar Of rus.h.i.+ng flames, the new bride's burning tears; And ever as still another vision peers Thro' memory's mist to stir me more and more, I say that surely I have lived before And known this joy and trembled with these fears.

The pa.s.sion that they show me burns so high; Their love, in me who have not looked on love, So fiercely flames; so wildly comes the cry Of stricken women the warrior's call above, That I would gladly lay me down and die To wake again where Helen and Hector move.

II

The falling rain is music overhead, The dark night, lit by no Intruding star, Fit covering yields to thoughts that roam afar And turn again familiar paths to tread, Where many a laden hour too quickly sped In happier times, before the dawn of war, Before the spoiler had whet his sword to mar The faithful living and the mighty dead.

It is not that my soul is weighed with woe, But rather wonder, seeing they do but sleep.

As birds that in the sinking summer sweep Across the heaven to happier climes to go, So they are gone; and sometimes we must weep, And sometimes, smiling, murmur, "Be it so!"

_Henry William Hutchinson_

THE MESSINES ROAD

I

The road that runs up to Messines Is double-locked with gates of fire, Barred with high ramparts, and between The unbridged river, and the wire.

None ever goes up to Messines, For Death lurks all about the town, Death holds the vale as his demesne, And only Death moves up and down.

II

Choked with wild weeds, and overgrown With rank gra.s.s, all torn and rent By war's opposing engines, strewn With debris from each day's event!

And in the dark the broken trees, Whose arching boughs were once its shade, Grim and distorted, ghostly ease In groans their souls vexed and afraid.

Yet here the farmer drove his cart, Here friendly folk would meet and pa.s.s, Here bore the good wife eggs to mart And old and young walked up to Ma.s.s.

Here schoolboys lingered in the way, Here the bent packman laboured by, And lovers at the end o' the day Whispered their secret blus.h.i.+ngly.

A goodly road for simple needs, An avenue to praise and paint, Kept by fair use from wreck and weeds, Blessed by the shrine of its own saint.

III

The road that runs up to Messines!

Ah, how we guard it day and night!

And how they guard it, who o'erween A stricken people, with their might!

But we shall go up to Messines Even thro' that fire-defended gate.

Over and thro' all else between And give the highway back its state.

_J. E. Stewart_

THE CHALLENGE OF THE GUNS

By day, by night, along the lines their dull boom rings, And that reverberating roar its challenge flings.

Not only unto thee across the narrow sea, But from the loneliest vale in the last land's heart The sad-eyed watching mother sees her sons depart.

And freighted full the tumbling waters of ocean are With aid for England from England's sons afar.

The gla.s.s is dim; we see not wisely, far, nor well, But bred of English bone, and reared on Freedom's wine, All that we have and are we lay on England's shrine.

A. N. Field

THE BEACH ROAD BY THE WOOD