The White Comrade, and Other Poems

by Katherine Hale

A Canadian soldier, wounded at Ypres, speaks

So this green land is England! Her we saw
Radiant and smiling in our early dreams,
A land by love dream-haunted. Now we come
With stranger vision than our youth could give
To the great shelter of her mighty arms.
We come from battles bitter and long fought
To see the stars shining on village streets
And watch a country in midsummer calm—
A soft land, lying August-clad but chill,
Dull to Canadian eyes that know the sun
As it stalks red across an azure sky.
And as we limp about and smoke, play cards,
And wait impatient to be off again,
Sometimes we two, amid the comrades here,—
Two only of the three who started out,
For, in the wood at Julien, Edward fell—
Sometimes we two go silent, then look up
To see if we can find in others' eyes
A knowledge that has grown with us from out
The fields of France, when in those awful nights,
Some of us heard a rumor, saw a Form.

* * * * *

Then we look back unto that strange new hour
When time was suddenly transformed for us
Within a sleepy town near old Quebec.
We, sunburned, and already turning home
From a long forest tramp of two good weeks,
We who were friends together, town and school
And lives in common, knitting us akin.
We had been tramping through the distant hills
Far out of reach of papers and of news
And when we stopped for letters, it was there
We met the first surprising note of war:
A little bill-board like a clarion voice
Shouted to us on that midsummer day,
"Germany says!" And on and on and on
The fateful message ran. We turned and stared
Into each other's eyes in blank amaze.
"Germany says!" In two short weeks of time
Hidden by forests as we three had been
Could all the world be humbled so that news
Of Germany, and what she says or does
Or does not say or do, could raise the storm
Whose thunders shook us even from afar.
"Belgium is entered!" "England is prepared!"
"Canada mobilizing!" Oh, ye gods,
What things to read upon a little board
Tacked up above the place where letters lie!

Later, we asked for ours, and they were full
Of a new wonder and a great surprise.
My little sister wrote, "I never dreamed
That things could happen in this prosy town;
But everyone is stirring and awake.
Red Cross is starting, and each girl I know
Has sent for wool. For we must learn to knit."
Then Edward broke his printed envelope:
"Insurance premiums for the risk in war."
The air went chill as at a sudden blast.
Nigel put his away. Nor opened it.
His letters must be read quite out of sight.
To-day I think he did not want to read.
To-morrow he would see her. And the word
Upon all lips would come into their eyes.
We talked with village gossips all day long,
We heard their suppositions, hopes and fears,
We tried to puzzle out those buried weeks,
When, out of sight and sound, such things had come
Upon the world we knew, that it no more
Was our same world. And we, in forest ways
Had been quite lost while it was changing. Strange
Past anything that we had dreamed before!

We climbed the hill behind the little town
And as we sat the gathering darkness fell,
The lights sprang up within the window panes
And some young boy had found a penny flute
Which through the gloaming sounded thin and clear
Like an emphatic fairy note, that called
To all the spirits that could hear its voice
To come and follow, follow where it led.
All here and there that shrill young flute cried "Come."
And sometimes laughter followed in its train.
We knew that children catching the refrain
Would follow, follow on all luring led
By that young voice through lands of summer night.

In the first bird note of St. Julien
I heard that flute again from hills of home,
When we three sat on that strange August night
And tried to talk and felt our own words fail,
But stared through violet shadows and knew then
That worlds might fall away and new ones dawn,
But never in this world more vital hours
Could come for Canada, or for ourselves
Than these midsummer days when all the land
Must ask a vital question—and reply.

Then we became new soldiers in a cause
That is as old as Christ, the crucified.
As we took drill out in the open air,
Drank the long draughts of ozone keen and bright,
Felt our whole bodies grow as if new-born,
Our minds kept pace and fed on wider thoughts.
Each man I think who was in truth a man,
Felt the old life slip from him in those days
And a new purpose take the place of self.

And so we left Valcartier, and stole out
Across the ocean—that long line of ships,
"The New Armada," trailing slowly out
Across that bridge of water to the land
Where life and death indeed had met as one.
Where life and death so closely were entwined
You could not tell where one began or ceased.
We did not talk of these things at the time
But each man, as he smoked and shuffled cards,
Or drilled his squad upon the sunny deck,
Each man was conscious through that great good time
That into life a nobler friend had come
To be denied or loved as each one chose.
A strong inevitable friend, so near
That we should touch him in the passing soon:
That young-old friend that life has long named Death.

At Salisbury we lived and moved in mud.
Talked mud, felt mud, and slept in it knee-deep.
England we felt not. Only lived the day,
And fell at night to leaden dreams of home.