The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry Read Free Page B

stands
    10             Defending the memory of leaves and the happy round
    Â Â Â Â Â Â nest.
    But mud has flooded the homes of these weary lands
    And piled them up in a dull grey heap in the West.
    All day has the clank of iron on iron distressed
    The nerve-bare place. Now a little silence expands
    And a gasp of relief. But the soul is still compressed:
    I carry my patience sullenly through the waste lands.
    The hours have ceased to fall, and a star commands
    Shadows to cover our stricken manhood, and blest
    Sleep to make forget: but he understands:
    20             To-morrow will pour them all back, the dull hours I
    Â Â Â Â Â Â detest.
    D. H. Lawrence
    1914: Safety
    Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest
    Â Â Â Â Â He who has found our hid security,
    Assured in the dark tides of the world that rest,
    Â Â Â Â Â And heard our word, ‘Who is so safe as we?’
    We have found safety with all things undying,
    Â Â Â Â Â The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth,
    The deep night, and birds singing, and clouds flying,
    Â Â Â Â Â And sleep, and freedom, and the autumnal earth.
    We have built a house that is not for Time’s throwing.
    10                  We have gained a peace unshaken by pain for ever.
    War knows no power. Safe shall be my going,
    Â Â Â Â Â Secretly armed against all death’s endeavour;
    Safe though all safety’s lost; safe where men fall;
    And if these poor limbs die, safest of all.
    Rupert Brooke
    â€˜
Now that you too must shortly go the way
’
    Now that you too must shortly go the way
    Which in these bloodshot years uncounted men
    Have gone in vanishing armies day by day,
    And in their numbers will not come again:
    I must not strain the moments of our meeting
    Striving each look, each accent, not to miss,
    Or question of our parting and our greeting,
    Is this the last of all? is this – or this?
    Last sight of all it may be with these eyes,
    10             Last touch, last hearing, since eyes, hands, and ears,
    Even serving love, are our mortalities,
    And cling to what they own in mortal fears: –
    But oh, let end what will, I hold you fast
    By immortal love, which has no first or last.
    Eleanor Farjeon
In Training
    The Kiss
    To these I turn, in these I trust;
    Brother Lead and Sister Steel.
    To his blind power I make appeal;
    I guard her beauty clean from rust.
    He spins and burns and loves the air,
    And splits a skull to win my praise;
    But up the nobly marching days
    She glitters naked, cold and fair.
    Sweet Sister, grant your soldier this;
    10             That in good fury he may feel
    The body where he sets his heel
    Quail from your downward darting kiss.
    Siegfried Sassoon
    Arms and the Boy
    Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade
    How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;
    Blue with all malice, like a madman’s flash;
    And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.
    Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-heads
    Which long to muzzle in the hearts of lads.
    Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth,
    Sharp with the sharpness of grief and death.
    For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple.
    10             There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple;
    And God will grow no talons at his heels,
    Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.
    Wilfred Owen
    â€˜
All the hills and vales along
’
    All the hills and vales along
    Earth is bursting into song,
    And the singers are the chaps
    Who are going to die perhaps.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â O sing, marching men,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Till the valleys ring again.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Give your gladness to earth’s