Voices of Silence (23 page)

Each morn with others banded,

I walked the palace ground,

As etiquette demanded,

We circled round and round.

At time my dizzy senses

Were soothed by slumb’rous spell,

But when I woke I savage spoke

And I wished I were in – Well! –

It’s no matter. At Wormwood Scrubs

There’s snarling and sneers and snubs,

But if ’tweren’t so bad, one would not be so glad

To bid farewell to Wormwood Scrubs!

Allan M. Laing

Comrades, let us on together in the course we have begun,

Fearless, tireless and unfaltering till our cause be won,

Let us ever keep before us as our guiding polar star,

Both in time of ease and plenty, and when warfare rages far,

Those ideas of Love and Freedom and the Brotherhood of Man,

Which alone can free the nations – bound since history began,

In the chains of fear and hatred, in the bonds of strife and sin –

Which alone can end war’s triumph, and the better age bring in.

We are young in mind and body, strong in faith and high in hope,

Eager with the hosts of error and of prejudice to cope,

Mighty forces are against us, principalities and powers,

Ancient customs, wealthy systems, but the victory shall be ours,

For our cause is pure and holy, we are fighting for the right,

And the Truth shall surely conquer as the morning follows night,

Even now the dawn is breaking, faintly in the eastern sky,

Even now the light is spreading, and the ancient shadows fly.

Forward then, let nothing daunt us, danger, poverty nor scorn,

Forward, all we do or suffer brings more near that glorious morn

When the age-long feuds shall perish, and the sounds of war shall cease,

And one universal nation shall proclaim the reign of peace.

Winchester Gaol, 6 June 1917

Harold F. Bing

Put out my eyes; but when you’ve done,

See if you can put out the sun!

Thrust me in gaol and turn the key –

Freedom shall win, nor fail with me.

Fetter these hands that wield the pen –

The sword most feared by knavish men;

Some hand, some pen renews the strife,

While throbs one heart for God and life.

What though my fire-touched lips were dumb,

Sealed in the darkness of the tomb?

Ten thousand voices thunder loud –

Shall mine be missed in such a crowd?

You think the Spring is dead, of course,

Its light, its song, its sap, its force,

Because your stupid hands prevail

To strangle one poor nightingale!

Father Tyrell

What a beautiful gift is water

To a throat that is parched with thirst!

How inspiring a look that is kindly

To one who is deemed accursed!

The torrent that rushes so freely

Down many a mountain-side

Is not esteemed so greatly

As a drop when rain is denied.

The joy that it is to be living,

To be vigorous, sturdy and well,

Is felt with double keenness

After being infirm for a spell.

And those who have not lived in prison

Scarce know what it feels to be free:

To enjoy the full rapture of freedom

A prisoner first one must be.

To the captive the air seems more fragrant

After being immured in a gaol,

And before the pure pleasure of freedom

All other enjoyments pale.

Ben Taylor

In the little empty worlds of the camps

We live through the weary hours;

Endless monotony, endless strain

Of silent endurance is ours,

When before the dead days’ endless march

The very spirit cowers.

Home and friends are so far away

Foes and hate are so near,

We are back with the primitive things of life,

Hunger and cold and fear.

We must keep steady in heart and brain –

Brethren, pray for us here.

M.G. Meugens

Within these cages day by day we pace

The bitter shortness of the meted span;

And this and that way variously we plan

Our poor excursions over the poor place,

Cribbed to extinction. Yet remains one grace.

For neither bars nor tented wire can ban

Full many a roving glance that dares to scan

The roomy hill, and wanders into space.

Yea, and remains for ever unrepealed

And unimpaired the free impetuous quest

Of mind’s soaring eye, at length unsealed

To the full measure of a life possessed

Awhile, but never counted, now revealed

Inestimable, wonderful, unguessed.

A.A. Bowman

Oh where’s the use to write?

What can I tell you, dear?

Just that I want you so

Who are not near.

Just that I miss the lamp whose blessèd light

Was God’s own moon to shine upon my night,

And newly mourn each new day’s lost delight:

Just – oh, it will not ease my pain –

That I am lonely

Until I see you once again,

You – you only.

F.W. Harvey

Day follows night, and night returns to day

Through all the enchanting stages of the spring;

And exile lengthens out to months that fling

Their shadow further, and my life grows gray;

Grays even with the sun’s increasing ray;

While forward still the heading heats do wing

Into the year, that softly rounds his ring

To midsummer, and June is on the way:

The perfect season, when the hawthorn blows

Down cream-white Scottish hedges, and the spent

Airs of the evening gently swaying close

Tired eyes upon it, heavy with its scent;

While on the Downs the beating sunlight glows,

And sends the wildering roses over Kent.

A.A. Bowman

Were men but men, and Christians not at all:

Mere pagans, primitive and quick of sense

To feel the sun’s great blind beneficence:

The kind hand of the breeze: – nay but to see

Only the brotherly blue that’s over all,

And realise that calm immensity

So far-enfolding, softly-bright and still,

Feel only that: – Surely they would not kill!

Beside a new-digged grave beneath the trees

I kneel. The brotherly sky is over all.

It seems to me so strange wars do not cease.

F.W. Harvey

A signal flutters at the Flagship’s fore,

And a deep pulse

Stirs in the mighty hulls

Slow wheeling seaward, where, beyond the Bar,

Half veiled in gloom,

Those messengers of doom

The lean Destroyers are.

From the thronged piers

Faintly, the sound of cheers

Tossed by the winds afar . . .

With gathering speed

The grey, grim shapes proceed –

The Might of England – to uphold the Law

’Gainst blackest treachery.

And the same courage high

That fired those valiant hearts at Trafalgar,

Burning from age to age,

Our proudest heritage,

Pierces disquieting war-clouds like a star,

As, burdened with a Nation’s hopes and fears,

The Battle Fleet of England sweeps to war.

N.M.F. Corbett

This is the man whose work is War;

He plans it out in a room on shore –

He and his Staff (all brainy chaps)

With miniature flags and monster maps,

And a crew whose tackle is Hydrographic,

With charts for steering our ocean traffic.

But the task that most engrosses him

Is to keep his Fleet in fighting trim;

To see that his airmen learn the knack

Of plomping bombs on a Zeppelin’s back;

To make his sailors good at gunnery,

And so to sink each floating hunnery.

Here is the man who mans the Fleet

With jolly young tars that can’t be beat;

He has them trained and taught the rules;

He looks to their hospitals, barracks, schools;

He notes what rumorous Osborne’s doing,

And if it has mumps or measles brewing.

He fills each officer’s vacant billet

(Provided the First Lord doesn’t fill it);

And he casts a fatherly eye, betweens,

On that fine old corps, the Royal Marines.

This is the job that once was Jellicoe’s,

But now he has one a bit more bellicose.

Ships
are the care of the Third Sea Lord,

And all Material kept on board.

’Tis he must see that the big guns boom

And the wheels go round in the engine-room;

’Tis he must find, for cloudy forays,

Aeroplanes and Astra Torres;

And, long ere anything’s sent to sea,

Tot up the bill for you and me.

The Fourth Sea Lord has a deal to plan,

For he’s, chief of all, the Transport man.

He finds the Fleet in coal and victuals

(Supplying the beer – if not the skittles);

He sees to the bad’uns that get imprisoned,

And settles what uniform’s worn (or isn’t) . . .

Even the stubbornest own the sway

Of the Lord of Food and the Lord of Pay!

R.P. Keigwin

On this primeval strip of western land,

With purple bays and tongues of shining sand,

Time, like an echoing tide,

Moves drowsily in idle ebb and flow;

The sunshine slumbers in the tangled grass

And homely folk with simple greeting pass,

As to their worship or their work they go.

Man, earth, and sea

Seem linked in elemental harmony,

And my insurgent sorrow finds release

In dreams of peace.

But silent, gray,

Out of the curtained haze,

Across the bay

Two fierce destroyers glide with bows afoam

And predatory gaze,

Like cormorants that seek a submerged prey.

An angel of destruction guards the door

And keeps the peace of our ancestral home;

Freedom to dream, to work, and to adore,

These vagrant days, nights of untroubled breath,

Are bought with death.

Henry Head