Counter-Attack and Other Poems | Page 6

joy,
Slept
soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack
of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him
again.

You snug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
GLORY OF WOMEN
You love us when we're heroes, home on leave,
Or wounded in a
mentionable place.
You worship decorations; you believe
That
chivalry redeems the war's disgrace.
You make us shells. You listen
with delight,
By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled.
You crown
our distant ardours while we fight,
And mourn our laurelled
memories when we're killed.
You can't believe that British troops
"retire"
When hell's last horror breaks them, and they run,

Trampling the terrible corpses--blind with blood.
O German mother dreaming by the fire,
While you are knitting socks
to send your son
His face is trodden deeper in the mud.
THEIR FRAILTY
He's got a Blighty wound. He's safe; and then
War's fine and bold and
bright.
She can forget the doomed and prisoned men
Who agonize
and fight.

He's back in France. She loathes the listless strain
And peril of his
plight.
Beseeching Heaven to send him home again,
She prays for
peace each night.
Husbands and sons and lovers; everywhere
They die; War bleeds us
white.
Mothers and wives and sweethearts,--they don't care
So long
as He's all right.
THE HAWTHORN TREE
Not much to me is yonder lane
Where I go every day;
But when
there's been a shower of rain
And hedge-birds whistle gay,
I know
my lad that's out in France
With fearsome things to see
Would give
his eyes for just one glance
At our white hawthorn tree.

Not much to me is yonder lane
Where he so longs to tread;
But when there's been a shower of rain
I think I'll never weep again
Until I've heard he's dead.
THE INVESTITURE
God with a Roll of Honour in His hand
Sits welcoming the heroes
who have died,
While sorrowless angels ranked on either side
Stand
easy in Elysium's meadow-land.
Then you come shyly through the
garden gate,
Wearing a blood-soaked bandage on your head;
And
God says something kind because you're dead,
And homesick,
discontented with your fate.
If I were there we'd snowball Death with skulls;
Or ride away to hunt
in Devil's Wood
With ghosts of puppies that we walked of old.
But
you're alone; and solitude annuls
Our earthly jokes; and strangely
wise and good
You roam forlorn along the streets of gold.

TRENCH DUTY
Shaken from sleep, and numbed and scarce awake,
Out in the trench
with three hours' watch to take,
I blunder through the splashing mirk;
and then
Hear the gruff muttering voices of the men
Crouching in
cabins candle-chinked with light.
Hark! There's the big bombardment
on our right
Rumbling and bumping; and the dark's a glare
Of
flickering horror in the sectors where
We raid the Boche; men
waiting, stiff and chilled,
Or crawling on their bellies through the
wire.
"What? Stretcher-bearers wanted? Some one killed?"
Five
minutes ago I heard a sniper fire:
Why did he do it? ... Starlight
overhead--
Blank stars. I'm wide-awake; and some chap's dead.
BREAK OF DAY
There seemed a smell of autumn in the air
At the bleak end of night;
he shivered there
In a dank, musty dug-out where he lay,
Legs
wrapped in sand-bags,--lumps of chalk and clay
Spattering his face.
Dry-mouthed, he thought, "To-day
We start the damned attack; and,
Lord knows why,
Zero's at nine; how bloody if I'm done in
Under
the freedom of that morning sky!"
And then he coughed and dozed,
cursing the din.
Was it the ghost of autumn in that smell
Of underground, or God's
blank heart grown kind,
That sent a happy dream to him in hell?--

Where men are crushed like clods, and crawl to find
Some crater for
their wretchedness; who lie
In outcast immolation, doomed to die

Far from clean things or any hope of cheer,
Cowed anger in their eyes,
till darkness brims
And roars into their heads, and they can hear

Old childish talk, and tags of foolish hymns.
He sniffs the chilly air; (his dreaming starts).
He's riding in a dusty
Sussex lane
In quiet September; slowly night departs;
And he's a
living soul, absolved from pain.
Beyond the brambled fences where

he goes
Are glimmering fields with harvest piled in sheaves,
And
tree-tops dark against the stars grown pale;
Then, clear and shrill, a
distant farm-cock crows;
And there's a wall of mist along the vale

Where willows shake their watery-sounding leaves.
He gazes on it all,
and scarce believes
That earth is telling its old peaceful tale;
He
thanks the blessed world that he was born ...
Then, far away, a lonely
note of the horn.
They're drawing the Big Wood! Unlatch the gate,
And set Golumpus
going on the grass:
He knows the corner where it's best to wait
And
hear the crashing woodland chorus pass;
The corner where old foxes
make their track
To the Long Spinney; that's the place to be.
The
bracken shakes below an ivied tree,
And then a cub looks out; and
"Tally-o-back!"
He bawls, and swings