Poems, 1916-1918

by Francis Brett Young

We digged our trenches on the down

Beside old barrows, and the wet

White chalk we shovelled from below;

It lay like drifts of thawing snow

On parados and parapet:

Until a pick neither struck flint

Nor split the yielding chalky soil,

But only calcined human bone:

Poor relic of that Age of Stone

Whose ossuary was our spoil.

Home we marched singing in the rain,

And all the while, beneath our song,

I mused how many springs should wane

And still our trenches scar the plain:

The monument of an old wrong.

But then, I thought, the fair green sod

Will wholly cover that white stain,

And soften, as it clothes the face

Of those old barrows, every trace

Of violence to the patient plain.

And careless people, passing by,

Will speak of both in casual tone:

Saying: 'You see the toil they made:

The age of iron, pick, and spade,

Here jostles with the Age of Stone.'

Yet either from that happier race

Will merit but a passing glance;

And they will leave us both alone:

Poor savages who wrought in stone--

Poor savages who fought in France.

WINTER SUNSET

Athwart the blackening bars of pines benighted,

The sun, descending to the zones of denser

Cloud that o'erhung the long horizon, lighted

Upon the crown of earth a flaming censer

From which white clouds of incense, overflowing,

Filled the chill clarity from whence the swallows

Had lately fled with wreathèd vapours, showing

Like a fine bloom over the lonely fallows:

Where, with the pungent breath of mist was blended

A faint aroma of pine-needles sodden

By autumn rains, and fainter still, ascended

Beneath high woods the scent of leaves downtrodden.

It was a moment when the earth, that sickened

For Spring, as lover when the beloved lingers,

Lay breathless, while the distant goddess quickened

Some southern hill-side with her glowing fingers:

And so, it seemed, the drowsy lands were shaken,

Stirred in their sleep, and sighed, as though the pain

Of a strange dream had bidden them awaken

To frozen days and bitter nights again.

SONG

Why have you stolen my delight

In all the golden shows of Spring

When every cherry-tree is white

And in the limes the thrushes sing,

O fickler than the April day,

O brighter than the golden broom,

O blyther than the thrushes' lay,

O whiter than the cherry-bloom,

O sweeter than all things that blow ...

Why have you only left for me

The broom, the cherry's crown of snow,

And thrushes in the linden-tree?

ENGLAND--APRIL, 1918

Last night the North flew at the throat of Spring

With spite to tear her greening banners down,

Tossing the elm-tree's tender tassels brown,

The virgin blossom of sloe burdening

With colder snow; beneath his frosty sting

Patient, the newly-wakened woods were bowed

By drownèd fields where stormy waters flowed:

Yet, on the thorn, I heard a blackbird sing....

'Too late, too late,' he sang, 'this wintry spite;

For molten snow will feed the springing grass:

The tide of life, it floweth with the year.'

O England, England, thou that standest upright

Against the tide of death, the bad days pass:

Know, by this miracle, that summer is near.

SLENDER THEMES

When, by a happier race, these leaves are turned,

They'll wonder that such quiet themes engaged

A soldier's mind when noisy wars were waged,

And half the world in one red bonfire burned.

'When that fierce age,' they'll say, 'went up in flame

He lived ... or died, seeing those bright deeds done

Whereby our sweet and settled peace was won,

Yet offereth slender dreams, not deeds, to Fame.'

Then say: 'Out of the heart the mouth speaketh,

And mine was as the hearts of other men

Whom those dark days impassioned; yet it seeketh

To paint the sombre woes that held us then,

No more than the cloud-rending levin's light

Seeks to illumine the sad skies of night.'

INVOCATION