M. Hut,

Because he said so, writing on his butt

Where once an hour a bullet missed its aim.

And misses teased the hunger of his brain.

His eyes grew old with wincing, and his hand

Reckless with ague. Courage leaked, as sand

From the best sandbags after years of rain.

But never leave, wound, fever, trench-foot, shock,

Untrapped the wretch. And death seemed still withheld

For torture of lying machinally shelled,

At the pleasure of this world’s Powers who’d run amok.

He’d seen men shoot their hands, on night patrol.

Their people never knew. Yet they were vile.

‘Death sooner than dishonour, that’s the style!’

So Father said.

II THE ACTION

One dawn, our wire patrol

Carried him. This time, Death had not missed.

We could do nothing but wipe his bleeding cough.

Could it be accident? – Rifles go off …

Not sniped? No. (Later they found the English ball.)

III THE POEM

It was the reasoned crisis of his soul

Against more days of inescapable thrall,

Against infrangibly wired and blind trench wall

Curtained with fire, roofed in with creeping fire,

Slow grazing fire, that would not burn him whole

But kept him for death’s promises and scoff,

And life’s half-promising, and both their riling.

IV THE EPILOGUE

With him they buried the muzzle his teeth had kissed,

And truthfully wrote the mother, ‘Tim died smiling.’

Mental Cases

Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?

Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,

Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,

Baring teeth that leer like skulls’ teeth wicked?

Stroke on stroke of pain, – but what slow panic,

Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?

Ever from their hair and through their hands’ palms

Misery swelters. Surely we have perished

Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?

– These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.

Memory fingers in their hair of murders,

Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.

Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,

Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.

Always they must see these things and hear them,

Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,

Carnage incomparable, and human squander,

Rucked too thick for these men’s extrication.

Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented

Back into their brains, because on their sense

Sunlight seems a blood-smear; night comes blood-black;

Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh

– Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,

Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.

– Thus their hands are plucking at each other;

Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;

Snatching after us who smote them, brother,

Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.

Futility

Move him into the sun –

Gently its touch awoke him once,

At home, whispering of fields unsown.

Always it woke him, even in France,

Until this morning and this snow.

If anything might rouse him now

The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds –

Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.

Are limbs, so dear achieved, are sides

Full-nerved – still warm – too hard to stir?

Was it for this the clay grew tall?

– O what made fatuous sunbeams toil

To break earth’s sleep at all?

Conscious

His fingers wake, and flutter; up the bed.

His eyes come open with a pull of will,

Helped by the yellow May-flowers by his head.

The blind-cord drawls across the window-sill …

What a smooth floor the ward has! What a rug!

Who is that talking somewhere out of sight?

Why are they laughing? What’s inside that jug …

‘Nurse! Doctor!’ ‘Yes; all right, all right.’

But sudden evening muddles all the air.

There seems no time to want a drink of water,

Nurse looks so far away. And everywhere

Music and roses burst through crimson slaughter.

He can’t remember where he saw blue sky.

More blankets. Cold. He’s cold. And yet so hot.

And there’s no light to see the voices by;

There is no time to ask – he knows not what.

Disabled

He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,

And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,

Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park

Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,

Voices of play and pleasure after day,

Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.

* * *

About this time Town used to swing so gay

When glow-lamps budded in the light blue trees,

And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim, –

In the old times, before he threw away his knees.

Now he will never feel again how slim

Girls’ waists are, or how warm their subtle hands;

All of them touch him like some queer disease.

* * *

There was an artist silly for his face,

For it was younger than his youth, last year.

Now, he is old; his back will never brace;

He’s lost his colour very far from here,

Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry,

And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race,

And leap of purple spurted from his thigh.

* * *

One time he liked a blood-smear down his leg,

After the matches, carried shoulder-high.

It was after football, when he’d drunk a peg,

He thought he’d better join. – He wonders why.

Someone had said he’d look a god in kilts,

That’s why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg;

Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts

He asked to join. He didn’t have to beg;

Smiling they wrote his lie: aged nineteen years.

Germans he scarcely thought of; all their guilt,

And Austria’s, did not move him. And no fears

Of Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hilts

For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes;

And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears;

Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits.

And soon he was drafted out with drums and cheers.

* * *

Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal.

Only a solemn man who brought him fruits,

Thanked him; and then enquired about his soul.

* * *

Now, he will spend a few sick years in Institutes,

And do what things the rules consider wise,

And take whatever pity they may dole.

Tonight he noticed how the women’s eyes

Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.

How cold and late it is! Why don’t they come

And put him into bed? Why don’t they come?

Sonnet

(On Seeing a Piece of Our Artillery Brought into Action)

Be slowly lifted up, thou long black arm,

Great gun towering toward Heaven, about to curse;

Sway steep against them, and for years rehearse

Huge imprecations like a blasting charm!

Reach at that arrogance which needs thy harm,

And beat it down before its sins grow worse;

Spend our resentment, cannon, yea, disburse

Our gold in shapes of flame, our breaths in storm.

Yet, for men’s sakes whom thy vast malison

Must wither innocent of enmity,

Be not withdrawn, dark arm, thy spoilure done,

Safe to the bosom of our prosperity.

But when thy spell be cast complete and whole,

May God curse thee, and cut thee from our soul!

Sonnet

(To a Child)

Sweet is your antique body, not yet young;

Beauty withheld from youth that looks for youth;

Fair only for your father. Dear among

Masters in art. To all men else uncouth;

Save me, who know your smile comes very old,

Learnt of the happy dead that laughed with gods;

For earlier suns than ours have lent you gold,

Sly fauns and trees have given you jigs and nods.

But soon your heart, hot-beating like a bird’s,

Shall slow down. Youth shall lop your hair;

And you must learn wry meanings in our words.

Your smile shall dull, because too keen aware;

And when for hopes your hand shall be uncurled,

Your eyes shall close, being opened to the world.

The Fates

They watch me, those informers to the Fates,

Called Fortune, Chance, Necessity, and Death;

Time, in disguise as one who serves and waits,

Eternity as girls of fragrant breath.

I know them. Men and Boys are in their pay,

And those I hold my trustiest friends may prove

Agents of Theirs to take me if I stray

From fatal ordinance. If I move, they move –

Escape? There is one unwatched way; your eyes,

O Beauty! Keep me good that secret gate.

And when the cordon tightens of the spies

Let the close iris of your eyes grow great.

So I’ll evade the vice and rack of age

And miss the march of lifetime, stage by stage.

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

The Next War

War’s a joke for me and you,

While we know such dreams are true.

SIEGFRIED SASSOON

Out there, we’ve walked quite friendly up to Death;

Sat down and eaten beside him, cool and bland, –

Pardoned his spilling mess-tins in our hand.

We’ve sniffed the green thick odour of his breath, –

Our eyes wept, but our courage didn’t writhe.

He’s spat at us with bullets and he’s coughed

Shrapnel. We chorused when he sang aloft;

We whistled while he shaved us with his scythe.

Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!

We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.

No soldier’s paid to kick against his powers.

We laughed, knowing that better men would come,

And greater wars; when every fighter brags

He wars on Death – for Life; not men – for flags.

Song of Songs

Sing me at morn but only with your laugh;

Even as Spring that laugheth into leaf;

Even as Love that laugheth after Life.

Sing me but only with your speech all day,

As voluble leaflets do; let viols die;

The least word of your lips is melody!

Sing me at eve but only with your sigh!

Like lifting seas it solaceth; breathe so,

Slowly and low, the sense that no songs say.

Sing me at midnight with your murmurous heart!

Let youth’s immortal-moaning chords be heard

Throbbing through you, and sobbing, unsubdued.

All Sounds Have Been as Music

All sounds have been as music to my listening:

Pacific lamentations of slow bells,

The crunch of boots on blue snow rosy-glistening,

Shuffle of autumn leaves; and all farewells:

Bugles that sadden all the evening air,

And country bells clamouring their last appeals

Before [the] music of the evening prayer;

Bridges, sonorous under carriage wheels.

Gurgle of sluicing surge through hollow rocks,

The gluttonous lapping of the waves on weeds,

Whisper of grass; the myriad-tinkling flocks,

The warbling drawl of flutes and shepherds’ reeds.

The orchestral noises of October nights

Blowing [     ] symphonetic storms

Of startled clarions [    ]

Drums, rumbling and rolling thunderous and [   ].

Thrilling of throstles in the keen blue dawn,

Bees fumbling and fuming over sainfoin-fields.

* * *

Voices

Bugles sang, saddening the evening air,

And bugles answered, sorrowful to hear.

Voices of boys were by the river-side.

Sleep mothered them; and left the twilight sad.

The shadow of the morrow weighed on men.

Voices of old despondency resigned,

Bowed by the shadow of the morrow, slept.

[        ] dying tone

Of receding voices that will not return.

The wailing of the high far-travelling shells

And the deep cursing of the provoking [    ].

The monstrous anger of our taciturn guns.

The majesty of the insults of their mouths.

Apologia pro Poemate meo

I, too, saw God through mud, –

The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled.

War brought more glory to their eyes than blood,

And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.

Merry it was to laugh there –

Where death becomes absurd and life absurder.

For power was on us as we slashed bones bare

Not to feel sickness or remorse of murder.

I, too, have dropped off fear –

Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon,

And sailed my spirit surging, light and clear

Past the entanglement where hopes lay strewn;

And witnessed exultation –

Faces that used to curse me, scowl for scowl,

Shine and lift up with passion of oblation,

Seraphic for an hour; though they were foul.

I have made fellowships –

Untold of happy lovers in old song.

For love is not the binding of fair lips

With the soft silk of eyes that look and long,

By Joy, whose ribbon slips, –

But wound with war’s hard wire whose stakes are strong;

Bound with the bandage of the arm that drips;

Knit in the webbing of the rifle-thong.

I have perceived much beauty

In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight;

Heard music in the silentness of duty;

Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate.

Nevertheless, except you share

With them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell,

Whose world is but the trembling of a flare

And heaven but as the highway for a shell,

You shall not hear their mirth:

You shall not come to think them well content

By any jest of mine. These men are worth

Your tears. You are not worth their merriment.

November 1917

À Terre

(Being the Philosophy of Many Soldiers)

Sit on the bed. I’m blind, and three parts shell.

Be careful; can’t shake hands now; never shall.

Both arms have mutinied against me, – brutes.

My fingers fidget like ten idle brats.

I tried to peg out soldierly, – no use!

One dies of war like any old disease.

This bandage feels like pennies on my eyes.

I have my medals? – Discs to make eyes close.

My glorious ribbons? – Ripped from my own back

In scarlet shreds. (That’s for your poetry book.)

A short life and a merry one, my buck!

We used to say we’d hate to live dead-old, –

Yet now … I’d willingly be puffy, bald,

And patriotic. Buffers catch from boys

At least the jokes hurled at them. I suppose

Little I’d ever teach a son, but hitting,

Shooting, war, hunting, all the arts of hurting.

Well, that’s what I learnt, – that, and making money.

Your fifty years ahead seem none too many?

Tell me how long I’ve got? God! For one year

To help myself to nothing more than air!

One Spring! Is one too good to spare, too long?

Spring wind would work its own way to my lung,

And grow me legs as quick as lilac-shoots.

My servant’s lamed, but listen how he shouts!

When I’m lugged out, he’ll still be good for that.

Here in this mummy-case, you know, I’ve thought

How well I might have swept his floors for ever.

I’d ask no nights off when the bustle’s over,

Enjoying so the dirt. Who’s prejudiced

Against a grimed hand when his own’s quite dust,

Less live than specks that in the sun-shafts turn,

Less warm than dust that mixes with arms’ tan?

I’d love to be a sweep, now, black as Town,

Yes, or a muckman.