Counter-Attack and Other Poems | Page 6

"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 his thong with volleying crack,--?All the clean thrill of autumn in his blood,?And hunting surging through him like a flood?In joyous welcome from the untroubled past;?While the war drifts away, forgotten at last.
Now a red, sleepy sun above the rim?Of twilight stares along the quiet weald,?And the kind, simple country shines revealed?In solitudes of peace, no longer dim.?The old horse lifts his face and thanks the light,?Then stretches down his head to crop the green.?All things that he has loved are in his sight;?The places where his happiness has been?Are in his eyes, his heart, and they are good.

Hark! there's the horn: they're drawing the Big Wood.
TO ANY DEAD OFFICER
Well, how are things in Heaven? I wish you'd say,?Because I'd like to know that you're all right.?Tell me, have you found everlasting day,?Or been sucked in by everlasting night??For when I shut