Chapter III: Part II: Poems Written Before La Bassée--1915

THE SHADOW OF DEATH

Here's an end to my art!
I must die and I know it,
With battle murder at my heart--
Sad death for a poet!

Oh my songs never sung,
And my plays to darkness blown!
I am still so young, so young,
And life was my own.

Some bad fairy stole
The baby I nursed:
Was this my pretty little soul,
This changeling accursed?

To fight and kill is wrong--
To stay at home wronger:
Oh soul, little play and song,
I may father no longer!

Here's an end to my art!
I must die and I know it,
With battle murder at my heart--
Sad death for a poet!

THE MORNING BEFORE THE BATTLE

To-day, the fight: my end is very soon,
And sealed the warrant limiting my hours:
I knew it walking yesterday at noon
Down a deserted garden full of flowers.
... Carelessly sang, pinned roses on my breast,
Reached for a cherry-bunch--and then, then, Death
Blew through the garden from the North and East
And blighted every beauty with chill breath.

I looked, and ah, my wraith before me stood,
His head all battered in by violent blows:
The fruit between my lips to clotted blood
Was transubstantiate, and the pale rose
Smelt sickly, till it seemed through a swift tear-flood
That dead men blossomed in the garden-close.

LIMBO

After a week spent under raining skies,
In horror, mud and sleeplessness, a week
Of bursting shells, of blood and hideous cries
And the ever-watchful sniper: where the reek
Of death offends the living ... but poor dead
Can't sleep, must lie awake with the horrid sound
That roars and whirs and rattles overhead
All day, all night, and jars and tears the ground;
When rats run, big as kittens: to and fro
They dart, and scuffle with their horrid fare,
And then one night relief comes, and we go
Miles back into the sunny cornland where
Babies like tickling, and where tall white horses
Draw the plough leisurely in quiet courses.

THE TRENCHES

(_Heard in the Ranks_)

Scratches in the dirt?
No, that sounds much too nice.
Oh, far too nice.
Seams, rather, of a Greyback Shirt,
And we're the little lice
Wriggling about in them a week or two,
Till one day, suddenly, from the blue
Something bloody and big will come
Like--watch this fingernail and thumb!--
Squash! and he needs no twice.

(+Nursery Memories+)

I.--THE FIRST FUNERAL

(_The first corpse I saw was on the German wires, and couldn't be buried_)

The whole field was so smelly;
We smelt the poor dog first:
His horrid swollen belly
Looked just like going burst.

His fur was most untidy;
He hadn't any eyes.
It happened on Good Friday
And there was lots of flies.

And then I felt the coldest
I'd ever felt, and sick,
But Rose, 'cause she's the oldest,
Dared poke him with her stick.

He felt quite soft and horrid:
The flies buzzed round his head
And settled on his forehead:
Rose whispered: "That dog's dead.

"You bury all dead people,
When they're quite really dead,
Round churches with a steeple:
Let's bury this," Rose said.

"And let's put mint all round it
To hide the nasty smell."
I went to look and found it--
Lots, growing near the well.

We poked him through the clover
Into a hole, and then
We threw brown earth right over
And said: "Poor dog, Amen!"

(+Nursery Memories+)

II.--THE ADVENTURE

(_Suggested by the claim of a machine-gun team to have annihilated an enemy wire party: no bodies were found however_)

To-day I killed a tiger near my shack
Among the trees: at least, it must have been,
Because his hide was yellow, striped with black,
And his eyes were green.

I crept up close and slung a pointed stone
With all my might: I must have hit his head,
For there he died without a twitch or groan,
And he lay there dead.

I expect that he'd escaped from a Wild Beast Show
By pulling down his cage with an angry tear;
He'd killed and wounded all the people--so
He was hiding there.

I brought my brother up as quick's I could
But there was nothing left when he did come:
The tiger's mate was watching in the wood
And she'd dragged him home.

But, anyhow, I killed him by the shack,
'Cause--listen!--when we hunted in the wood
My brother found my pointed stone all black
With the clotted blood.

(+Nursery Memories+)

III.--I HATE THE MOON

(_After a moonlight patrol near the Brickstacks_)

I hate the Moon, though it makes most people glad,
And they giggle and talk of silvery beams--you know!
But _she_ says the look of the Moon drives people mad,
And that's the thing that always frightens me so.

I hate it worst when it's cruel and round and bright,
And you can't make out the marks on its stupid face,
Except when you shut your eyelashes, and all night
The sky looks green, and the world's a horrible place.

I like the stars, and especially the Big Bear
And the W star, and one like a diamond ring,
But I _hate_ the Moon and its horrible stony stare,
And I know one day it'll do me some dreadful thing.

BIG WORDS

"I've whined of coming death, but now, no more!
It's weak and most ungracious. For, say I,
Though still a boy if years are counted, why!
I've lived those years from roof to cellar-floor,
And feel, like grey-beards touching their fourscore,
Ready, so soon as the need comes, to die:
And I'm satisfied.
For winning confidence in those quiet days
Of peace, poised sickly on the precipice side
Of Lliwedd crag by Snowdon, and in war
Finding it firmlier with me than before;
Winning a faith in the wisdom of God's ways
That once I lost, finding it justified
Even in this chaos; winning love that stays
And warms the heart like wine at Easter-tide;
Having earlier tried
False loves in plenty; oh! my cup of praise
Brims over, and I know I'll feel small sorrow,
Confess no sins and make no weak delays
If death ends all and I must die to-morrow."

But on the firestep, waiting to attack,
He cursed, prayed, sweated, wished the proud words back.

THE DEAD FOX HUNTER

We found the little captain at the head;
His men lay well aligned.
We touched his hand--stone-cold--and he was dead,
And they, all dead behind,
Had never reached their goal, but they died well;
They charged in line, and in the same line fell.

The well-known rosy colours of his face
Were almost lost in grey.
We saw that, dying and in hopeless case,
For others' sake that day
He'd smothered all rebellious groans: in death
His fingers were tight clenched between his teeth.

For those who live uprightly and die true
Heaven has no bars or locks,
And serves all taste.... Or what's for him to do
Up there, but hunt the fox?
Angelic choirs? No, Justice must provide
For one who rode straight and at hunting died.

So if Heaven had no Hunt before he came,
Why, it must find one now:
If any shirk and doubt they know the game,
There's one to teach them how:
And the whole host of Seraphim complete
Must jog in scarlet to his opening Meet.

IT'S A QUEER TIME

It's hard to know if you're alive or dead
When steel and fire go roaring through your head.

One moment you'll be crouching at your gun
Traversing, mowing heaps down half in fun:
The next, you choke and clutch at your right breast
No time to think--leave all--and off you go ...
To Treasure Island where the Spice winds blow,
To lovely groves of mango, quince and lime--
Breathe no goodbye, but ho, for the Red West!
It's a queer time.

You're charging madly at them yelling "Fag!"
When somehow something gives and your feet drag.
You fall and strike your head; yet feel no pain
And find ... you're digging tunnels through the hay
In the Big Barn, 'cause it's a rainy day.
Oh springy hay, and lovely beams to climb!
You're back in the old sailor suit again.
It's a queer time.

Or you'll be dozing safe in your dug-out--
A great roar--the trench shakes and falls about--
You're struggling, gasping, struggling, then ... hullo!
Elsie comes tripping gaily down the trench,
Hanky to nose--that lyddite makes a stench--
Getting her pinafore all over grime.
Funny! because she died ten years ago!
It's a queer time.

The trouble is, things happen much too quick;
Up jump the Bosches, rifles thump and click,
You stagger, and the whole scene fades away:
Even good Christians don't like passing straight
From Tipperary or their Hymn of Hate
To Alleluiah-chanting, and the chime
Of golden harps ... and ... I'm not well to-day ...
It's a queer time.

1915

I've watched the Seasons passing slow, so slow
In the fields between La Bassée and Bethune;
Primroses and the first warm day of Spring,
Red poppy floods of June,
August, and yellowing Autumn, so
To Winter nights knee-deep in mud or snow,
And you've been everything,

Dear, you've been everything that I most lack
In these soul-deadening trenches--pictures, books,
Music, the quiet of an English wood,
Beautiful comrade-looks,
The narrow, bouldered mountain-track,
The broad, full-bosomed ocean, green and black,
And Peace, and all that's good.

OVER THE BRAZIER

What life to lead and where to go
After the War, after the War?
We'd often talked this way before
But I still see the brazier glow
That April night, still feel the smoke
And stifling pungency of burning coke.

I'd thought: "A cottage in the hills,
North Wales, a cottage full of books,
Pictures and brass and cosy nooks
And comfortable broad window-sills,
Flowers in the garden, walls all white,
I'd live there peacefully, and dream and write."

But Willy said "No, Home's no good
Old England's quite a hopeless place
I've lost all feeling for my race:
But France has given me heart and blood
Enough to last me all my life
I'm off to Canada with my wee wife.

"Come with us, Mac, old thing," but Mac
Drawled: "No, a Coral Isle for me,
A warm green jewel in the South Sea.
There's merit in a lumber shack
And labour is a grand thing ... but
Give me my hot beach and my cocoanut."

So then we built and stocked for Willy
A log-hut, and for Mac a calm
Rockabye cradle on a palm--
Idyllic dwellings--but this silly
Mad War has now wrecked both, and what
Better hopes has my little cottage got?

July, 1915.

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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

Minor punctuation and printer errors repaired.

Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and small capitals by =plus signs=.