THERE ARE CROCUSES AT NOTTINGHAM
Written in the Trenches
Flanders, spring of 1917. Authorship unknown.
OUT here the dogs of war run loose,
Their whipper-in is Death;
Across the spoilt and battered fields
We hear their sobbing breath.
The fields where grew the living corn
Are heavy with our dead;
Yet still the fields at home are green
And I have heard it said:
That—
There are crocuses at Nottingham!
Wild crocuses at Nottingham!
Blue crocuses at Nottingham!
Though here the grass is red.
There are little girls at Nottingham
Who do not dread the boche,
Young girls at school at Nottingham
(Lord! how I need a wash!)
There are little boys at Nottingham
Who never hear a gun;
There are silly fools at Nottingham
Who think we’re here for fun.
When—
There are crocuses at Nottingham!
Young crocus buds at Nottingham!
Thousands of buds at Nottingham
Ungathered by the Hun.
But here we trample down the grass
Into a purple slime;
There lives no tree to give the birds
House room in pairing time.
We live in holes, like cellar rats,
But through the noise and smell
I often see those crocuses
Of which the people tell.
Why—
There are crocuses at Nottingham!
Bright crocuses at Nottingham!
Real crocuses at Nottingham!
Because we’re here in Hell.
THE WAR ROSARY
NELLIE HURST
in The Westminster Gazette
I KNIT, I knit, I pray, I pray.
My knitting is my rosary.
And as I weave the stitches gray,
I murmur pray’rs continually.
Gray loop, a sigh, gray knot, a wish,
Gray row a chain of wistful pray’r,
For thus to sit and knit and pray—
This is of war the woman’s share.
And so I knit, and thus I pray,
And keep repeating night and day,
May God lead safely those dear feet
That soon shall wear the web of gray.
Now and again a selfish strain?
But surely woman heart must yearn,
And pray sometimes that she may hear
The footsteps that return.
But if, O God, Not that.
But if it must be sacrifice complete,
Then I will trust that afterward
Thou wilt guide home those precious feet.