Two Hundred Years After
Trudging by Corbie Ridge one winter’s night, (Unless old hearsay memories tricked his sight) Along the pallid edge of the quiet sky He watched a nosing lorry grinding on, And straggling files of men;
Golgotha
Through darkness curves a spume of falling flares That flood the field with shallow, blanching light. The huddled sentry stares On gloom at war with white, And white receding slow, submerged in gloom. Guns
Does It Matter?
Does it matter?-losing your legs? For people will always be kind, And you need not show that you mind When others come in after hunting To gobble their muffins and eggs. Does it matter?-losing
The Effect
‘The effect of our bombardment was terrific. One man told me he had never seen so many dead before.’ -War Correspondent. ‘He’d never seen so many dead before.’ They sprawled in yellow daylight while
Memorial Tablet
Squire nagged and bullied till I went to fight, (Under Lord Derby’s Scheme). I died in hell – (They called it Passchendaele). My wound was slight, And I was hobbling back; and then a
Devotion to Duty
I was near the King that day. I saw him snatch And briskly scan the G. H. Q. dispatch. Thick-voiced, he read it out. (His face was grave.) ‘This officer advanced with the first
Battalion-Relief
‘FALL in! Now get a move on.’ (Curse the rain.) We splash away along the straggling village, Out to the flat rich country, green with June… And sunset flares across wet crops and tillage,
Companions
Leave not your bough, my slender song-bird sweet, But pipe me now your roundelay complete. Come, gentle breeze, and tarrying on your way, Whisper my trees what you have seen to-day. Stand, golden cloud,
Attack
AT dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun In the wild purple of the glow’ring sun, Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one, Tanks creep
Today
This is To-day, a child in white and blue Running to meet me out of Night who stilled The ghost of Yester-eve; this is fair Morn The mother of To-morrow. And these clouds That
Arcady Unheeding
Shepherds go whistling on their way In the spring season of the year; One watches weather-signs of day; One of his maid most dear Dreams; and they do not hear The birds that sing
The Last Meeting
I Because the night was falling warm and still Upon a golden day at April’s end, I thought; I will go up the hill once more To find the face of him that I
A Subaltern
He turned to me with his kind, sleepy gaze And fresh face slowly brightening to the grin That sets my memory back to summer days, With twenty runs to make, and last man in.
Miracles
I dreamt I saw a huge grey boat in silence steaming Down a canal; it drew the dizzy landscape after; The solemn world was sucked along with it-a streaming Land-slide of loveliness. O, but
Glory Of Women
You love us when we’re heroes, home on leave, Or wounded in a mentionable place. You worship decorations; you believe That chivalry redeems the war’s disgrace. You make us shells. You listen with delight,