Voices of Silence (44 page)

Well, how’s things now at the office?

Give my regards to the Boss.

And, say, Mae, you needn’t worry –

I haven’t written to Floss.

What’s happened to Willie Fitzgibbons?

I hope he ain’t seein’ you home.

It seems about time he got drafted;

That guy’s got no sense in his dome.

As for me, Mae, I’m working my head off.

They drills us from morning to night.

The officers calls it ‘intensive’,

And they come pretty near bein’ right.

But we’re gettin’ good eats all the time, Mae,

And the boys are in dandy shape, too.

When they give us a chance at the Kaiser

I’ll hand him a wallop for you.

And say, Mae, drop me a line, please.

I’ll write you again in a while,

But we haven’t got much time for writing

And letters ain’t much in my style.

Here’s hoping that this find you well, Mae,

As I am, who love you, you know,

And thank you again for the parcel.

Good night. Taps has started to blow.

Harold Amory

When eau de cologne comes from limberger cheese,

When the jelly fish swallows the whale;

When kangaroos roost on gooseberry trees

And grasshoppers feed upon quail;

When the laws of gravity cease to exist

And the rivers all run up hill;

When young Americans no more enlist

To shoot at ‘All Highest Bill’;

When bumblebees whistle ‘Die Wacht Am Rhine’;

When feathers are found upon frogs,

When the mule is blessed with a voice divine

And humming birds prey upon hogs;

When submarines swim through the air at night;

When powder won’t burn in our guns –

Then maybe our allies will give up the fight

And the world will be ruled by the Huns.

Eugene E. Wilson

How doth the little busy wife

Improve each shining hour?

She shops and cooks and works all day,

The best within her power.

How carefully she cuts the bread,

How thin she spreads the jam!

That’s all she has for breakfast now,

Instead of eggs and ham.

In dealing with the tradesmen, she

Is frightened at the prices,

For meat and fish have both gone up,

And butter too, and rice has.

Each thing seems dearer ev’ry week,

It’s really most distressing,

Why can’t we live on love and air?

It would be such a blessing!

Nina Macdonald

The doctors say our national waste

Is largely due to too much taste.

We ought at once to form the habit

Of thinking something else is rabbit,

And never, when the meat is coarse,

Demand if it is cow or horse.

So long as hunger’s satisfied,

Let’s keep our palates to decide

Between a
CHAIRMAN
and the rest,

Which cigarette we find the best.

I bow before the butcher-man,

I grovel to the grocer,

I swallow all the saucy airs

With which they answer ‘No, sir!’

But what a change, to go next door

And there with head erect,

To buy some
CHAIRMAN
cigarettes

And a little self-respect!

Monday – we’ll say is our ‘Heatless Day’,

One cinder, one flicker, one coal.

Tuesday – well – this is our ‘Meatless Day’,

One oyster, one herring, one sole.

Wednesday – oh, this is our ‘Wheatless Day’,

One seed cake, one pancake, one scone.

Thursday – we must have a ‘Sweetless Day’,

One pickle, one lemon, one bone.

Friday – will make a good ‘Eatless Day’,

One cheerful and glorious fast.

Saturday – call it a ‘Treatless Day’,

For all reciprocity’s past.

But Sunday – may Ole Clynes forgive us, we pray,

If we should all happen to feel

A little more hungry than usual to-day

And once again eat a square meal.

A thrifty old lady of Hull,

Whose intellect seemed rather dull,

When reading at night,

To economise light,

Put luminous paint on her skull.

The little things of which we lately chattered –

The dearth of taxis or the dawn of spring;

Themes we discussed as though they really mattered,

Like rationed meat or raiders on the wing; –

How thin it seems to-day, this vacant prattle,

Drowned by the thunder rolling in the West,

Voice of the great arbitrament of battle

That puts our temper to the final test.

Thither our eyes are turned, our hearts are straining,

Where those we love, whose courage laughs at fear,

Amid the storm of steel around them raining,

Go to their death for all we hold most dear.

New-born of this supremest hour of trial,

In quiet confidence shall be our strength,

Fixed on a faith that will not take denial

Nor doubt that we have found our soul at length.

O England, staunch of nerve and strong of sinew,

Best when you face the odds and stand at bay,

Now show a watching world what stuff is in you!

Now make your soldiers proud of you to-day!

Owen Seaman

There’s a hush upon the city, and its jarring voices cease;

All its thoughts are bent in silence on the strife beyond the seas.

It is watching, it is waiting, and it cannot choose but dwell,

On the dust-brown lines in Picardy that front the hordes of Hell.

Spring is pulsing in our gardens but we hardly feel its breath;

Through the song of thrush and linnet throbs the choral ode of Death;

And we walk like men who wander in some dream’s mysterious maze,

Half-instinctive, half-unconscious, through the old familiar ways,

Hope with doubt and fear contending, while our hearts are strained and tense,

As we count the fateful minutes in the anguish of suspense;

As a prayer is breathed to Heaven from the million lips that say,

‘God of Battles shield our England and her soldier sons this day!’

What of our comrades in the forward post?

The fog of war but deepened with the day.

We knew that in that troubled ocean lay

Unchartered shoals, blind rocks, and treacherous coast.

And what of yonder never-ending host

Of wan, unwounded Portuguese? Ah, stay,

Pale sergeant. Do you bleed? You came that way?

What is the tidings? Is the front line lost?

‘Nothing is known of posts that lie before

Levantie. At the cross-roads hellish fire

Has cut them off who shouldered the first load.’

Can they live through it? ‘They can not retire,

Nor can you reinforce. I know no more

But this. No living thing comes down that road.’

Never wound cortège more exceeding slow,

Nor mourners to more melancholy tones,

Than that wan wending, musicked by the moans

Of wounded men, whom pity bade us show

That much of tenderness. Nor friend nor foe

Spoke in the heavy language of these groans,

But stark mankind, whose utter anguish owns

A common nature, in a common woe.

Full many a mile of weary footing sore,

By miry side tracks, not unkindly led;

And each unwounded man his burden bore

On stretcher or in blanket, ransacked bed,

Duck-board uprooted, hand-cart, unhinged door.

We left behind the dying and the dead.

Hour followed hour, and slowly on we wound,

Till wan day turned to front the gradual west;

And with day’s waning waned the dream of rest

For the worn bearers, whom the twilight found

Voyaging no-man’s gray, wide-watered ground,

Their shoulders bowed and aching backs distressed;

Isthmused between deep pools, and sorely pressed

To foot the flanks of many a slippery mound;

While floundering convoys, till the light was gone,

Across the perilous space their drivers nurse,

Limber and gun, by frightened horses drawn,

Whose plunging swerve that bogged their burdens worse,

Provoked Teutonic fury, well laid on

With sounding whipcord and sonorous curse.

And darkness fell, and a great void of space,

As if to bar our further going on,

Unfeatured, huge, gloomed o’er us. No light shone.

Strength, too, scarce held sufficient now to trace

The squalid reaches of this dismal place;

And silence settled near and far upon

That vacancy at length – our last guide gone.

Night hid each from his comrade, face from face.

As is a voyage through the uncharted waste

Of sea, unpiloted by any star,

Alone, unmooned, uncomforted, unplanned;

So forward still in silent pain we paced,

Nor light of moon nor pharos gleamed from far

Across the boding gloom of that lost land.

We came to Aubers at the dead of night,

And found the semblance of that circled hell,

Which Dante once, damnation’s pains to tell,

Paced out in darkness, agony and fright.

In that blank lazarette no kindly light

On bending form of nurse or surgeon fell,

But darkness and barred doors proclaimed too well

The piteous end of long-endured plight.

No room was there in stable or in stall,

Nor roof to shelter cattle while they eat,

Where wounded men could shelter from the blight

Of the foul dew that drizzling covered all.

But in the open and the squelching street

We left them to endure the drenching night.