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- It seemed that out of the battle I escaped
- Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
- Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.
- Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
- Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
- Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
- With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
- Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
- And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall;
- With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;
- Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
- And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
- "Strange, friend," I said, "Here is no cause to mourn."
- "None," said the other, "Save the undone years,
- The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
- Was my life also; I went hunting wild
- After the wildest beauty in the world,
- Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
- But mocks the steady running of the hour,
- And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
- For by my glee might many men have laughed,
- And of my weeping something has been left,
- Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
- The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
- Now men will go content with what we spoiled.
- Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
- They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,
- None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
- Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
- Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;
- To miss the march of this retreating world
- Into vain citadels that are not walled.
- Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels
- I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
- Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
- I would have poured my spirit without stint
- But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
- Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.
- I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
- I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned
- Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
- I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
- Let us sleep now . . ."
(This poem was found among the author's papers. It ends on this strange note.) *Another Version*
- Earth's wheels run oiled with blood. Forget we that.
- Let us lie down and dig ourselves in thought.
- Beauty is yours and you have mastery,
- Wisdom is mine, and I have mystery.
- We two will stay behind and keep our troth.
- Let us forego men's minds that are brute's natures,
- Let us not sup the blood which some say nurtures,
- Be we not swift with swiftness of the tigress.
- Let us break ranks from those who trek from progress.
- Miss we the march of this retreating world
- Into old citadels that are not walled.
- Let us lie out and hold the open truth.
- Then when their blood hath clogged the chariot wheels
- We will go up and wash them from deep wells.
- What though we sink from men as pitchers falling
- Many shall raise us up to be their filling
- Even from wells we sunk too deep for war
- And filled by brows that bled where no wounds were.
*Alternative line --*
- Even as One who bled where no wounds were.
- Red lips are not so red
- As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
- Kindness of wooed and wooer
- Seems shame to their love pure.
- O Love, your eyes lose lure
- When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!
- Your slender attitude
- Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,
- Rolling and rolling there
- Where God seems not to care;
- Till the fierce Love they bear
- Cramps them in death's extreme decrepitude.
- Your voice sings not so soft, -- -
- Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft, -- -
- Your dear voice is not dear,
- Gentle, and evening clear,
- As theirs whom none now hear
- Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed.
- Heart, you were never hot,
- Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;
- And though your hand be pale,
- Paler are all which trail
- Your cross through flame and hail:
- Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not.
- 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 welding 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.
- My soul looked down from a vague height with Death,
- As unremembering how I rose or why,
- And saw a sad land, weak with sweats of dearth,
- Gray, cratered like the moon with hollow woe,
- And fitted with great pocks and scabs of plaques.
- Across its beard, that horror of harsh wire,
- There moved thin caterpillars, slowly uncoiled.
- It seemed they pushed themselves to be as plugs
- Of ditches, where they writhed and shrivelled, killed.
- By them had slimy paths been trailed and scraped
- Round myriad warts that might be little hills.
- From gloom's last dregs these long-strung creatures crept,
- And vanished out of dawn down hidden holes.
- (And smell came up from those foul openings
- As out of mouths, or deep wounds deepening.)
- On dithering feet upgathered, more and more,
- Brown strings towards strings of gray, with bristling spines,
- All migrants from green fields, intent on mire.
- Those that were gray, of more abundant spawns,
- Ramped on the rest and ate them and were eaten.
- I saw their bitten backs curve, loop, and straighten,
- I watched those agonies curl, lift, and flatten.
- Whereat, in terror what that sight might mean,
- I reeled and shivered earthward like a feather.
- And Death fell with me, like a deepening moan.
- And He, picking a manner of worm, which half had hid
- Its bruises in the earth, but crawled no further,
- Showed me its feet, the feet of many men,
- And the fresh-severed head of it, my head.
- 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' tongues wicked?
- Stroke on stroke of pain, -- - but what slow panic,
- Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
- Ever from their hair and through their hand 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 bloodsmear; 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.
- So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
- And took the fire with him, and a knife.
- And as they sojourned both of them together,
- Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
- Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
- But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
- Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
- And builded parapets and trenches there,
- And stretch\ed forth the knife to slay his son.
- When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
- Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
- Neither do anything to him. Behold,
- A ram caught in a thicket by its horns;
- Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
- But the old man would not so, but slew his son
- And half the seed of Europe, one by one.
-
- 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.
- 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.
- 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; no prayers nor 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.
- Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way
- To the siding-shed,
- And lined the train with faces grimly gay.
- Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray
- As men's are, dead.
- Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp
- Stood staring hard,
- Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.
- Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp
- Winked to the guard.
- So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.
- They were not ours:
- We never heard to which front these were sent.
- Nor there if they yet mock what women meant
- Who gave them flowers.
- Shall they return to beatings of great bells
- In wild trainloads?
- A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,
- May creep back, silent, to still village wells
- Up half-known roads.
I
- Happy are men who yet before they are killed
- Can let their veins run cold.
- Whom no compassion fleers
- Or makes their feet
- Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.
- The front line withers,
- But they are troops who fade, not flowers
- For poets' tearful fooling:
- Men, gaps for filling
- Losses who might have fought
- Longer; but no one bothers.
II
- And some cease feeling
- Even themselves or for themselves.
- Dullness best solves
- The tease and doubt of shelling,
- And Chance's strange arithmetic
- Comes simpler than the reckoning of their shilling.
- They keep no check on Armies' decimation.
III
- Happy are these who lose imagination:
- They have enough to carry with ammunition.
- Their spirit drags no pack.
- Their old wounds save with cold can not more ache.
- Having seen all things red,
- Their eyes are rid
- Of the hurt of the colour of blood for ever.
- And terror's first constriction over,
- Their hearts remain small drawn.
- Their senses in some scorching cautery of battle
- Now long since ironed,
- Can laugh among the dying, unconcerned.
IV
- Happy the soldier home, with not a notion
- How somewhere, every dawn, some men attack,
- And many sighs are drained.
- Happy the lad whose mind was never trained:
- His days are worth forgetting more than not.
- He sings along the march
- Which we march taciturn, because of dusk,
- The long, forlorn, relentless trend
- From larger day to huger night.
V
- We wise, who with a thought besmirch
- Blood over all our soul,
- How should we see our task
- But through his blunt and lashless eyes?
- Alive, he is not vital overmuch;
- Dying, not mortal overmuch;
- Nor sad, nor proud,
- Nor curious at all.
- He cannot tell
- Old men's placidity from his.
VI
- But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns,
- That they should be as stones.
- Wretched are they, and mean
- With paucity that never was simplicity.
- By choice they made themselves immune
- To pity and whatever mourns in man
- Before the last sea and the hapless stars;
- Whatever mourns when many leave these shores;
- Whatever shares
- The eternal reciprocity of tears.
- Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
- Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
- Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
- And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
- Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
- But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
- Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
- Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
- Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! -- - An ecstasy of fumbling
- Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
- But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
- And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime. -- -
- Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
- As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
- In all my dreams before my helpless sight
- He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
- If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
- Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
- And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
- His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
- If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
- Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
- Bitten as the cud
- Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -- -
- My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
- To children ardent for some desperate glory,
- The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
- Pro patria mori.
- We'd found an old Boche dug-out, and he knew,
- And gave us hell, for shell on frantic shell
- Hammered on top, but never quite burst through.
- Rain, guttering down in waterfalls of slime
- Kept slush waist high, that rising hour by hour,
- Choked up the steps too thick with clay to climb.
- What murk of air remained stank old, and sour
- With fumes of whizz-bangs, and the smell of men
- Who'd lived there years, and left their curse in the den,
- If not their corpses. . . .
-
There we herded from the blast
- Of whizz-bangs, but one found our door at last.
- Buffeting eyes and breath, snuffing the candles.
- And thud! flump! thud! down the steep steps came thumping
- And splashing in the flood, deluging muck -- -
- The sentry's body; then his rifle, handles
- Of old Boche bombs, and mud in ruck on ruck.
- We dredged him up, for killed, until he whined
- "O sir, my eyes -- - I'm blind -- - I'm blind, I'm blind!"
- Coaxing, I held a flame against his lids
- And said if he could see the least blurred light
- He was not blind; in time he'd get all right.
- "I can't," he sobbed. Eyeballs, huge-bulged like squids
- Watch my dreams still; but I forgot him there
- In posting next for duty, and sending a scout
- To beg a stretcher somewhere, and floundering about
- To other posts under the shrieking air.
- Those other wretches, how they bled and spewed,
- And one who would have drowned himself for good, -- -
- I try not to remember these things now.
- Let dread hark back for one word only: how
- Half-listening to that sentry's moans and jumps,
- And the wild chattering of his broken teeth,
- Renewed most horribly whenever crumps
- Pummelled the roof and slogged the air beneath -- -
- Through the dense din, I say, we heard him shout
- "I see your lights!" But ours had long died out.
- He dropped, -- - more sullenly than wearily,
- Lay stupid like a cod, heavy like meat,
- And none of us could kick him to his feet;
- Just blinked at my revolver, blearily;
- -- Didn't appear to know a war was on,
- Or see the blasted trench at which he stared.
- "I'll do 'em in," he whined, "If this hand's spared,
- I'll murder them, I will."
-
A low voice said,
- "It's Blighty, p'raps, he sees; his pluck's all gone,
- Dreaming of all the valiant, that aren't dead:
- Bold uncles, smiling ministerially;
- Maybe his brave young wife, getting her fun
- In some new home, improved materially.
- It's not these stiffs have crazed him; nor the Hun."
- We sent him down at last, out of the way.
- Unwounded; -- - stout lad, too, before that strafe.
- Malingering? Stretcher-bearers winked, "Not half!"
- Next day I heard the Doc.'s well-whiskied laugh:
- "That scum you sent last night soon died. Hooray!"
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