Voices of Silence (37 page)

I see it all, I see the same brave souls

To-night, to-morrow, though the half be gone,

Deafened and dazed, and hunted from their holes,

Helpless and hunger-sick, but holding on.

I shall be happy all the long day here,

But not till night shall they go up the steep,

And nervous now because the end is near,

Totter at last to quietness and to sleep.

And men who find it easier to forget,

In England here, among the daffodils,

That there in France are fields unflowered yet,

And murderous May-days on the unlovely hills –

Let them go walking where the land is fair

And watch the breaking of a morn in May,

And think, ‘It may be Zero over there,

But here is Peace’ – and kneel a while, and pray.

A.P. Herbert

Men said, ‘At last! at last the open battle!

Now shall we fight unfettered o’er the plain,

No more in catacombs be cooped like cattle,

Nor travel always in a devious drain!’

They were in ecstasies. But I was damping;

I like a trench, I have no lives to spare;

And in those catacombs, however cramping,

You did at least know vaguely where you were.

Ah, happy days in deep well-ordered alleys,

Where, after dining, probably with wine,

One felt indifferent to hostile sallies,

And with a pipe meandered round the line;

You trudged along a trench until it ended;

It led at least to some familiar spot;

It might not be the place that you’d intended,

But then you might as well be there as not.

But what a wilderness we now inhabit

Since this confounded ‘open’ strife prevails!

It may be good; I do not wish to crab it,

But you should hear the language it entails,

Should see this waste of wide uncharted craters

Where it is vain to seek the companies,

Seeing the shell-holes are as like as taters

And no one knows where anybody is.

Oft in the darkness, palpitant and blowing,

Have I set out and lost the hang of things,

And ever thought, ‘Where
can
the guide be going?’

But trusted long and rambled on in rings,

For ever climbing up some miry summit,

And halting there to curse the contrite guide,

For ever then descending like a plummet

Into a chasm on the other side.

Oft have I sat and wept, or sought to study

With hopeless gaze the uninstructive stars,

Hopeless because the very skies were muddy;

I only saw a red malicious Mars;

Or pulled my little compass out and pondered,

And set it sadly on my shrapnel hat,

Which, I suppose, was why the needle wandered,

Only, or course, I never thought of that.

And then perhaps some 5.9s start dropping,

As if there weren’t sufficient holes about;

I flounder on, hysterical and sopping,

And come by chance to where I started out,

And say once more, while I have no objection

To other people going to Berlin,

Give
me
a trench, a nice revetted section,

And let me stay there till the Bosch gives in!

A.P. Herbert

I wandered up to Beaucourt. I took the river track,

And saw the lines we lived in before the Boche went back.

But peace was now in Pottage, the front was far ahead,

The front was flying Eastward, and only left the dead.

And I thought ‘How long we lay there, and watched across the wire,

While the guns roared round the valley and set the skies afire’.

But now there are homes in Hamel, and tents in the Vale of Hell

And a camp at Suicide Corner, where half the Regiment fell.

The new troops follow after and tread the land we won;

To them it is so much hillside, re-wrested from the Hun.

To us ’tis almost sacred, this dreary mile of mud;

The shell holes hold our history and half of them our blood.

Here at the head of Peche Street ’twas death to show your face,

To me it seemed like magic to linger in the place.

To me how many spirits hung round the Kentish Caves.

But the new men see no spirits – they only see the graves.

I found the half dug ditches we fashioned for the fight.

We lost a score of men there – young James was killed that night.

I saw the star shells staring, I heard the bullets hail,

But the new men pass unheeding – they never heard the tale.

I crossed the blood-red ribbon that once was No-Man’s Land;

I saw a winter daybreak and a creeping minute hand:

And here the lads went over, and there was Harmsworth shot,

And here was William lying – but the new men knew them not.

And I said ‘There is still the river and still the stiff stark trees

To treasure here our story, but there are only these’.

But under the white wood crosses the dead men answered low

‘The new men know not Beaucourt, but we are here – we know’.

A.P. Herbert

How can we reason still, how look afar,

Who, these three years now, are

Drifting, poor flotsam hugely heaved and hurled

In the birthday of a world,

Upon the waves of the creative sea?

How gain lucidity

Or even keep the faith wherewith at first

We met the storm that burst,

The singing hope of revolution’s prime?

For in that noble time

We saw the petty world dissolve away

And fade into a day

Where dwelt new spirits of a better growth,

Unchecked by spite and sloth.

We saw, and even now we seem to see,

In fitful revelry,

Like hills obscured and hid by earthly mist,

The hopes that first we kissed:

We see them, catch at them and lose again

In apathy and pain

What maybe was (though it once seemed ours to hold)

No more than fairy gold.

We pity those whom quick death overtakes,

Though they will never see

How hope dissolves and founded loyalty shakes

Traitorously, piteously.

They lose at most and death is voiceless still

Nor whispers in their ears

When they are lying on the deep-scarred hill

What our calm silence hears.

They lose all various life, they lose the day,

The clouds, the winds, the rain,

The blossoms down an English road astray

They will not see again;

Great is their loss but more tremendous things

To us at home are given,

Doubts, fears and greeds and shameful waverings

That hide the blood-red heaven.

They knew no doubt and fear was soon put by:

Freely their souls could move

In deeds that gave new life to loyalty

A sharper edge to love.

They are the conquerors, the happy dead,

Who gave their lives away,

And now amid the trenches where they bled,

Forgetful of the day,

Deaf, blind and unaware, sleep on and on,

Nor open eyes to weep,

Know nought of what is ended or what begun

But only and always sleep.

We said on the first day, we said and swore

That self should be no more,

That we were risen, that we would wholly be

For love and liberty;

And in the exhilaration of that oath

We cast off spite and sloth

And laboured for an hour, till we began,

Man after piteous man,

To lose the splendour, to forget the dream

And leave our noble theme.

To find again our lusts and villainies

And seek a baser prize;

This we have done and what is left undone

Cries out beneath the sun.

How glad a dawn fades thus in foggy night,

Where not a star shines bright!

Is all then gone? That nobler morning mood

When pain appeared an honour and grief a gift

And what was difficult was also good?

Are all our wishes on the waves adrift?

The young, the eager-hearted, they are gone,

And we, the stay-at-homes, are tired and old,

Careless how carelessly our work is done,

Forgetful how that morning rose in gold

When all our hearts cried out in unison,

Triumphant in the new triumphal sun.

How dull a night succeeds! how dark and cold!

We will arise. Oh, not as then with singing,

But silence in our mouths and no word said,

Though wracks of that lost glory round us clinging

Shames us with broken oaths we swore the dead,

But steadfast in humility we rise,

Hoping no glory, having merited none,

Through the long night to toil with aching eyes

And pray that our humbler hearts may earn the sun.

Edward Shanks

‘Would that the war were over, and again

We walked together in a Wiltshire lane.

The West shrills keenly through the Hackpen thorn:

From that high, lonely wood by Winterborne

Wet leaves are whirled far out across the vale.

We should find comfort in the downland gale;

Its glorious blast, so wild, yet angerless,

Blows sorrow from the heart and bitterness.’

So, like some wandering child, we stretch our hands

To shining phantom faces, and far lands

Of heart’s desire.

O solace, vainly sought

To light the sad opacity of thought!

There is no charm in any outward thing

To ease the heart from smarting at the sting

Of friendship snapped, of dull frustrated days

Of hopes that perish in the desolate ways.

The wind of mirth and sympathy is spilled

Wherewith the vessel of our hearts was filled,

Lending bright influence to the wind and trees.

Our lives are empty now; and how for these

Can earth, that lives not, find reviving breath

To quicken the sterility of death?

The sun-rays still go wheeling o’er the hill;

But closed those eyes their passing used to fill

With sudden glory. Say! shall we return,

Where every sight can teach us but to mourn?

Shall we return, where every field and tree

Is radiant with the light of memory?

Here, by this hedgerow, Rupert musing lay:

This pool was Nigel’s haunt at morning grey:

Down that hill-side Ned ran so cheerily

The day he left, and turned to call good-bye.

If once again we climb to Barbary,

None but the dead will keep us company:

Their printless feet will fall with ours, unseen;

And silent voices fill the listening dene.

‘Dear land of noon-day light’ we said before,

But now – ‘Dear land of ghosts!’ – for evermore.

The old, untroubled world is dead, where laughter

Was still more real than tears: and we, hereafter

Must live with grief for our reality.

We will return, then, not forgetfully,

To breathe an opiate in the upland wind,

And gain dull ease and vacant peace of mind.

We will return, but rather there to gain

More vital apprehension of our pain

In memory of the dead, and of our pride

In presence of the land for which they died:

Beyond the lonely wood once more to lie,

Where that remote green bastion fronts the sky;

To see beneath us plains and woodlands wide,

Encompassed round about and unified

In a great flood of light: once more to press

Our fingers in the turf’s soft friendliness,

Fragrant with flowerets of thyme: and thence

Shall pass into our hearts a keener sense

Of what could those great hearts so greatly move,

England, their hope, their faith, their passion of love.

E. Hilton Young

It’s a long lane has no turning:

It’s never ‘too late’ to mend:

The darkest hour is nearest the dawn,

And even
this
war must end.

There was a time when first I donned the Khaki –

Oh, martial days in Brighton-by-the-Sea! –

When not the deepest draught of Omar’s Saki

Could fire my ardent soul like dixie tea.

I dreamed of bloody spurs and bloodier sabre,

Of mentions – not too modest – in despatches;

I threw my foes, as Scotchmen toss the caber,

And sent my prisoners home in wholesale batches;

Led my platoons to storm the Prussian trenches,

Galloped my guns to enfilade his flank;

Was it H.M.’s own royal hand, or French’s

That pinned the V.C. on my tunic?
SWANK
!