BATTLE
THE GOING
He’s gone.
I do not understand.
I only know
That as he turned to go
And waved his hand,
In his young eyes a sudden glory shone:
And I was dazzled by a sunset glow,
And he was gone.
THE JOKE
He’d even have his joke
While we were sitting tight,
And so he needs must poke
His silly head in sight
To whisper some new jest
Chortling. But as he spoke
A rifle cracked ...
And now God knows when I shall hear the rest!
IN THE AMBULANCE
“Two rows of cabbages,
Two of curly-greens,
Two rows of early peas,
Two of kidney-beans.”
That’s what he is muttering,
Making such a song,
Keeping other chaps awake,
The whole night long.
Both his legs are shot away,
And his head is light;
So he keeps on muttering
All the blessed night:
“Two rows of cabbages,
Two of curly-greens,
Two rows of early peas,
Two of kidney-beans.”
HIT
Out of the sparkling sea
I drew my tingling body clear, and lay
On a low ledge the livelong summer day,
Basking, and watching lazily
White sails in Falmouth Bay.
My body seemed to burn
Salt in the sun that drenched it through and through,
Till every particle glowed clean and new
And slowly seemed to turn
To lucent amber in a world of blue....
I felt a sudden wrench—
A trickle of warm blood—
And found that I was sprawling in the mud
Among the dead men in the trench.
THE HOUSEWIFE
She must go back, she said,
Because she’d not had time to make the bed.
We’d hurried her away
So roughly ... and for all that we could say,
She broke from us, and passed
Into the night, shells falling thick and fast.
HILL-BORN
I sometimes wonder if it’s really true
I ever knew
Another life
Than this unending strife
With unseen enemies in lowland mud;
And wonder if my blood
Thrilled ever to the tune
Of clean winds blowing through an April noon
Mile after sunny mile
On the green ridges of the Windy Gile.
THE FEAR
I do not fear to die
’Neath the open sky,
To meet death in the fight
Face to face, upright.
But when at last we creep
Into a hole to sleep,
I tremble, cold with dread,
Lest I wake up dead.
BACK
They ask me where I’ve been,
And what I’ve done and seen.
But what can I reply
Who know it wasn’t I,
But someone, just like me,
Who went across the sea
And with my head and hands
Slew men in foreign lands ...
Though I must bear the blame
Because he bore my name.