DEAD MAN'S DUMP
by ISAAC ROSENBERG
The plunging
limbers over the shattered track
Racketed with
their rusty freight,
Stuck out like
many crowns of thorns,
And the rusty
stakes like sceptres old
To stay the
flood of brutish men
Upon our
brothers dear.
The wheels
lurched over sprawled dead
But pained them
not, though their bones crunched,
Their shut
mouths made no moan,
They lie there
huddled, friend and foeman,
Man born of man,
and born of woman,
And shells go
crying over them
From night till
night and now.
Earth has waited
for them,
All the time of
their growth
Fretting for
their decay:
Now she has them
at last!
In the strength
of their strength
Suspended---stopped
and held.
What fierce
imaginings their dark souls lit
Earth! have they
gone into you?
Somewhere they
must have gone,
And flung on
your hard back
Is their soul's
sack,
Emptied of
God-ancestralled essences.
Who hurled them
out? Who hurled?
None saw their
spirits' shadow shake the grass,
Or stood aside
for the half used life to pass
Out of those
doomed nostrils and the doomed mouth,
When the swift
iron burning bee
Drained the wild
honey of their youth.
What of us, who
flung on the shrieking pyre,
Walk, our usual
thoughts untouched,
Our lucky limbs
as on ichor fed,
Immortal seeming
ever?
Perhaps when the
flames beat loud on us,
A fear may choke
in our veins
And the startled
blood may stop.
The air is loud
with death,
The dark air
spurts with fire,
The explosions
ceaseless are.
Timelessly now,
some minutes past,
These dead
strode time with vigorous life,
Till the
shrapnel called 'an end!'
But not to all.
In bleeding pangs
Some borne on
stretchers dreamed of home,
Dear things,
war-blotted from their hearts.
A man's brains
splattered on
A
stretcher-bearer's face;
His shook
shoulders slipped their load,
But when they
bent to look again
The drowning
soul was sunk too deep
For human
tenderness.
They left this
dead with the older dead,
Stretched at the
cross roads.
Burnt black by
strange decay
Their sinister
faces lie
The lid over
each eye,
The grass and
coloured clay
More motion have
than they,
Joined to the
great sunk silences.
Here is one not
long dead;
His dark hearing
caught our far wheels,
And the choked
soul stretched weak hands
To reach the
living word the far wheels said,
The blood-dazed
intelligence beating for light,
Crying through
the suspense of the far torturing wheels
Swift for the
end to break,
Or the wheels to
break,
Cried as the
tide of the world broke over his sight.
Will they come?
Will they ever come?
Even as the
mixed hoofs of the mules,
The
quivering-bellied mules,
And the rushing
wheels all mixed
With his
tortured upturned sight,
So we crashed
round the bend,
We heard his
weak scream,
We heard his
very last sound,
And our wheels
grazed his dead face.
TO A SOLDIER IN
HOSPITAL by WINIFRED M. LETTS
COURAGE came to you with your boyhood’s grace
Of ardent life
and limb.
Each day new dangers steeled you to the test,
To ride, to
climb, to swim.
Your hot blood taught you carelessness of death
With every
breath.
So when you went to play another game
You could not
but be brave:
An Empire’s team, a rougher football field,
The end—perhaps
your grave.
What matter? On the winning of a goal
You staked
your soul.
Yes, you wore courage as you wore your youth
With
carelessness and joy.
But in what Spartan school of discipline
Did you get
patience, boy?
How did you learn to bear this long-drawn pain
And not
complain?
Restless with throbbing hopes, with thwarted aims,
Impulsive as a colt,
How do you lie here month by weary month
Helpless, and
not revolt?
What joy can these monotonous days afford
Here in a ward?
Yet you are merry as the birds in spring,
Or feign the
gaiety,
Lest those who dress and tend your wound each day
Should guess
the agony.
Lest they should suffer—this the only fear
You let draw near.
Greybeard philosophy has sought in books
And argument
this truth,
That man is greater than his pain, but you
Have learnt it
in your youth.
You know the wisdom taught by Calvary
At twenty-three.
Death would have found you brave, but braver still
You face each
lagging day,
A merry Stoic, patient, chivalrous,
Divinely kind
and gay. 40
You bear your knowledge lightly, graduate
Of unkind
Fate.
Careless philosopher, the first to laugh,
The latest to
complain,
Unmindful that you teach, you taught me this
In your long
fight with pain:
Since God made man so good—here stands my creed—
God’s good
indeed.
THE WIND ON THE DOWNS by MARIAN ALLEN
I like to
think of you as brown and tall,
As strong and living as you used to be,
In khaki tunic, Sam Brown belt and all,
And standing there and laughing down at me.
Because they tell me, dear, that you are dead,
Because I can no longer see your face,
You have not died, it is not true, instead,
You seek adventure some other place.
I hear you laughing as you used to,
Yet loving all the things I think of you;
And knowing you are happy, should I grieve?
You follow and are watchful where I go;
How should you leave me, having loved me so?
We walked along the towpath, you and I,
Beside the sluggish-moving, still canal;
It seemed impossible that you should die;
I think of you the same and always shall.
We thought of many things and spoke of few,
And life lay all uncertainly before,
And now I walk alone and think of you,
And wonder what new kingdoms you explore.
Over the railway line, across the grass,
While up above the golden wings are spread,
Flying, ever flying overhead,
Here still I see you khaki figure pass,
And when I leave meadow, almost wait,
That you should open first the wooden gate.
FOR THE FALLEN by LAURENCE BINYON
With proud
thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and
royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.
They went with songs to the battle, they
were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left
grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
They mingle not with laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.
But where our desires are and our hopes
profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
As the stars that shall be bright when we
are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
NO MAN’S LAND by JAMES H. KNIGHT-ADKIN
NO Man’s Land is an eerie sight
At early dawn in the pale gray light.
Never a house and never a hedge
In No Man’s Land from edge to edge,
And never a living soul walks there
To taste the fresh of the morning air;—
Only some lumps of rotting clay,
That were friends or foemen yesterday.
What are the bounds of No Man’s Land?
You can see them clearly on either hand,
A mound of rag-bags gray in the sun,
Or a furrow of brown where the earthworks run
From the eastern hills to the western sea,
Through field or forest o’er river and lea;
No man may pass them, but aim you well
And Death rides across on the bullet or shell.
But No Man’s Land is a goblin sight
When patrols crawl over at dead o’ night;
Boche or British, Belgian or French,
You dice with death when you cross the trench.
When the “rapid,” like fireflies in the dark,
Flits down the parapet spark by spark,
And you drop for cover to keep your head
With your face on the breast of the four months’ dead.
The man who ranges in No Man’s Land
Is dogged by the shadows on either hand
When the star-shell’s flare, as it bursts o’erhead,
Scares the gray rats that feed on the dead,
And the bursting bomb or the bayonet-snatch
May answer the click of your safety-catch,
For the lone patrol, with his life in his hand,
Is hunting for blood in No Man’s Land.
