Voices of Silence (35 page)

What though the camphor’s barrage lines

Have failed to stop the looting

And moths have marred my chaste designs,

Oh
ante-bellum
suiting!

Oh stylish weeds wherein I wooed

Evangeline and Ermyntrude,

Oh pair of spats that once astounded Tooting!

What though, I say, this fancy vest

A fearsome sight discloses,

Where wingèd things have found a nest

And snatched their impious dozes,

And battened on the sacred woof,

And made it bed and board and roof,

Wearing, I doubt not, gas-masks on their noses?

Conscious, at least, that long ago

They took the town with splendour,

Shall I not put them on and blow

The war-time mufti-vendor?

Though I look somewhat like a sieve,

Shall not men, seeing me, forgive?

There are no shades to-day so sweet, so tender.

Shall they not also say, ‘This proves

How soon, how swiftly laughed he

At all our petty peace-time grooves,

And challenged Fritz the crafty;

These were the 1914 cut;

In those dim days he was a nut;

Just now, of course, they seem a trifle draughty?’

Yes, I am proud; my chest is filled

With triumph, and I smack it;

What do I care for punctures drilled

Straight through a service jacket?

These are my wounds – this well-loved tweed,

Laid on one side for England’s need,

Less like a tweed now than a tennis racquet.

Then up, my ancient suits and ties!

In vain the tailors peddle;

In vain for me the sempstress plies

Her spinning-wheel and treadle;

The voice of British Honour speaks

In these my perforated breeks,

Each orifice becomes a blooming medal.

E.G.V. Knox

I do not ask, when back on Blighty’s shore

My frozen frame in liberty shall rest,

For pleasure to beguile the hours in store

With long-drawn revel or with antique jest.

I do not ask to probe the tedious pomp

And tinsel splendour of the last Revue;

The Fox-trot’s mysteries, the giddy Romp,

And all such folly I would fain eschew.

But, propt on cushions of my long desire,

Deep-buried in the vastest of armchairs,

Let me recline what time the roaring fire

Consumes itself and all my former cares.

I shall not think nor speak, nor laugh nor weep,

But simply sit and sleep and sleep and sleep.

J. Shirley

A minx in khaki struts the limelit boards:

With false moustache, set smirk and ogling eyes

And straddling legs and swinging hips she tries

To swagger it like a soldier, while the chords

Of rampant ragtime jangle, clash, and clatter;

And over the brassy blare and drumming din

She strains to squirt her squeaky notes and thin

Spirtle of sniggering lascivious patter.

Then out into the jostling Strand I turn,

And down a dark lane to the quiet river,

One stream of silver under the full moon,

And think of how cold searchlights flare and burn

Over dark trenches where men crouch and shiver,

Humming, to keep their hearts up, that same tune.

Wilfrid W. Gibson

We have taken a trench

Near Combles, I see,

Along with the French.

We have taken a trench.

(
Oh, the bodies, the stench!
)

Won’t you have some more tea?

We have taken a trench

Near Combles, I see.

F.W. Harvey

I wanter go back to the trenches;

I wanter go back to the front;

I wanter go back to me rifle an’ pack,

An’ ’ear me old straps creak and grunt;

I wanter get back to me blanket,

An’ sleep on me little old plank,

’Cos the cold, clammy sheets that the folks thinks is treats

Make me shiver like rats in a tank.

I wanter get back from the war news,

I wanter get back to the Hun;

I wanter retreat from the chaps in the street

’Oo know ’ow the war should be run:

I wanter go where ‘Tipperary’

Ain’t whistled from mornin’ till night;

I wanter go back where the Zepps don’t attack

’Cos there ain’t any babies to fight.

I wanter get back from the flappers

’Oo rattle their boxes an’ flags:

I wanter vamoose from the bloomin’ revues

An’ the wearisome singin’ of ‘rags’;

I wanter get back from the motors,

An’ miners with strikes on the brain,

I’m too muddled to think, an’ I shan’t sleep a wink

Till I’m safe back in Flanders again.

D. Large

It was not the white cliff at the rim of the sea,

Nor Folkestone, with its roofs all bless’d with smoke;

Nor the shrill English children at the quay;

Not even the railway-bank alight with primrose fire,

Nor the little fields of Kent, and the woods, and the far church spire –

It was not these that spoke.

It was the red earth of Devon that called to me,

‘
So you’m back, you li’l boy that us used to know!
’

It was the deep, dim lanes that wind to the sea,

And the Devon streams that turn and twist and run,

And the Devon hills that stretch themselves in the sun,

Like drowsy green cats watching the world below.

There were herons stalked the salty pools that day,

Where the sea comes laughing up to the very rails . . .

At Newton I saw Dartmoor far away.

By Paignton there was one I saw who ploughed,

With the red dust round him like a sunset cloud,

And beyond in the bay was Brixham with her sails.

How could I fail to mourn for you, the brave,

Who loved these things a little year before?

In each unshattered field I saw a grave,

And through the unceasing music of the sea

The scream of shells came back, came back to me.

It was a green peace that suddenly taught me war.

Out of the fight you found the shorter way

To those great silences where men may sleep.

We follow by the paths of every day,

Blind as God made us, hoping that the end

May hear that laughter between friend and friend

Such as through death the greater-hearted keep.

We are not weary yet. The fight draws out,

And sometimes we have sickened at the kill,

And sometimes in the night comes slinking doubt

To whisper that peace cometh not through Hell.

But yet we want to hear God’s anger tell

The guns to cease their fury and be still.

We are not weary yet, though here the rain

Beats without shame upon the shattered dead.

And there I see the lazy waves again.

And in the weedy pools along the beach

The brown-legged boys, with their dear Devon speech,

Are happier than the gay gulls overhead.

Up the wet sand a spaniel sputters by,

Soused like a seal, and laughing at their feet;

There is a gull comes slanting down the sky,

Kisses the sea, and mews, and flies away.

And, like flat jewels set against the grey,

The roofs of Brixham glitter through the heat.

It was for this you died: this, through the earth,

Peace and the great men peace shall make,

And dogs and children and careless mirth . . .

Beauty be with you now – and of this land

In bloody travail for the world you planned,

God give you deep oblivion when you wake.

T.P. Cameron Wilson

But distant Spring sat waiting fair

With wealth of flowers to be,

Half wond’ring if she scarcely dare

To set a Spring-day free

With Winter still in power, and share

The hours in rivalry.

I think she must have known that you

And I were glad that day,

For in defiance, skies were blue

And warm the sun’s pale ray,

And distant lay the silvered view

Of Trent’s sweet winding way.

A gentle wind with zephyr sighs

Caressed your glossy hair;

The river-light was in your eyes,

Your face a happy lair

To catch the sunlight for your prize

And keep it captive there.

We wandered through the leafless aisles

That skirt the banks of Trent,

And oft, between the sudden whiles

When sunshine came and went,

I saw your face with happy smiles

And richest love all blent.

Those happy hours are ever set,

Though all too brief and bright;

Within my book of ‘Ne’er Forget’ –

The leaves where I indite

Sweet mem’ries, that will always wet

The stars with tears at night.

Edmund Hennesley

Last week, a prey to military duty,

I turned my lagging footsteps to the West;

I have a natural taste for scenic beauty,

And all my pent emotions may be guessed

To find myself again

At Didcot, loathliest junction of the plain.

But all things come upon the patient waiter,

‘Behold!’ I cried, ‘in yon contiguous blue

Beetle the antique spires of Alma Mater

Almost exactly as they used to do

In 1898,

When I became an undergraduate.

‘O joys whereto I went as to a bridal,

With Youth’s fair aureole clustering on a brow

That no amount of culture (herpecidal)

Will coax the semblance of a crop from now,

Once more I make ye mine;

There is a train that leaves at half-past nine.

‘In a rude land where life among the boys is

One long glad round of cards and coffin juice,

And any sort of intellectual poise is

The constant butt of well-expressed abuse,

And it is no disgrace

To put the table-knife inside one’s face,

‘I have remembered picnics on the Isis,

Bonfires and bumps and
BOFFIN’S
cakes and tea,

Nor ever dreamed a European crisis

Would make a British soldier out of me –

The mute inglorious kind

That push the beastly war on from behind.

‘But here I am’ (I mused) ‘and quad and cloister

Are beckoning to me with the old allure;

The lovely world of Youth shall be mine oyster

Which I for one-and-ninepence can secure,

Reaching on Memory’s wing

Parnassus’ groves and Wisdom’s fabled spring’.

But oh, the facts! How doomed to disillusion

The dreams that cheat the mind’s responsive eye!

Where are the undergrads in gay profusion

Whose waistcoats made melodious the High,

And the
jeunesse dorée

That shed the glamour of an elder day?

Can this be Oxford? And is that my college

That vomits khaki through its sacred gate?

Are those the schools where once I aired my knowledge

Where nurses pass and ambulances wait?

Ah! sick ones, pale of face,

I too have suffered tortures in that place!

In Tom his quad the Bloods no longer flourish;

Balliol is bare of all but mild Hindoos;

The stalwart oars the Isis used to nourish

Are in the trenches giving Fritz the Blues,

And many a stout D.D.

Is digging trenches with the V.T.C.

Why press the search when every hallowed close is

Cluttered with youthful soldiers forming fours;

While the drum stutters and the bugler blows his

Loud summons, and the hoarse bull-sergeant roars,

While almost out of view

The thrumming biplane cleaves the astonished blue?

It is a sight to stir the pulse of poet,

These splendid youths with zeal and courage fired,

But as for Private Me, M.A. – why, blow it!

The very sight of soldiers makes me tired;

Learning – detached, apart –

I sought, not War’s reverberating art.

Vain search! But see! One ancient institution

Still doing business at the same old stand;

’Tis Messrs Barclay’s Bank, or I’m a Proosian,

That erst dispensed my slender cash-in-hand;

I’ll borrow of their pelf

And buy some War Loan to console myself.

C.H. Bretherton

When I got into Chainey’s bus

Down at the station it began;

I didn’t seem a fighting-man

No more: the old hills made no fuss

At seeing me; the winding road

That troops an’ transports never knowed,

And the old station nag’s click-clack

Just took me back.

The Twelve Apostles’ boughs were bare,

Just as they was last time I came.

Mother was looking just the same

And Father hadn’t turned a hair.

I washed as usual at the pump;

My bed had got the same old lump;

Dick lived next door – I near forgot

I seen him shot.

Church wasn’t changed on Christmas Day –

Old Westmacott took round the plate;

The old Major stood up stiff and straight,

And it seems somehow just like play

Saluting him, retired an’ all.

Home – no, the War, I think – seems small . . .

This evening I go back to France

And take my chance.

W.W. Blair Fish